


And Now the Storm-Blast Came

by AMarguerite



Category: Persuasion - Jane Austen
Genre: Almost Kiss, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anne picks up a fossil collecting hobby because I'm a nerd, F/M, Fossils, Huddling For Warmth, Mutual Pining, Pining, Romanticism, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, YOU WILL HAVE TO READ IT TO FIND OUT, and also it's a good metaphor, be forewarned, did you know that there is no tag for fossils?, for what you ask?, medicine was horrifying before germ theory, oh no one bed what do, well anyway
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-18
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 11:14:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17466518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMarguerite/pseuds/AMarguerite
Summary: Anne Elliot stays in Lyme to nurse Louisa, and starts collecting fossils. While looking for these curios on the beaches of Lyme Regis, she and Captain Wentworth get caught in a thunderstorm, search for shelter, and pine a lot. Coleridge's 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner' gets quoted frequently, though only Anne and Benwick ever recognize the allusions.





	1. In Which Anne Persuades Mary to Go Back to Uppercross

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so, so much to sethnakht and rain-sleet-snow for the beta work, and singelisilverslippers for suggesting Persuasion, bed sharing, and huddling for warmth in a prompt game. Thanks to nurselaney for the stuff about concussions, and everyone else who so helpfully gave suggestions and helped me refine my ideas!

_ And now the STORM-BLAST came, and he _

_ Was tyrannous and strong: _

_ He struck with his o'ertaking wings, _

_ And chased us south along. _

-Samuel Taylor Coleridge, _The Rime of the Ancient Mariner_

* * *

 

After putting the unconscious Louisa into Captain Benwick’s room upstairs, everyone crammed themselves into the Harvilles’ small parlor, looking with agitation through the open door every time they heard a noise on the stairs, and crying, praying, sitting, or cutting bandages as suited their dispositions. Anne was in the latter camp, and assisted Captain and Mrs. Harville by sitting at the small table with them, rolling up what they measured and cut out of an old linen sheet. Anne kept her eyes on her work and did not look across the table, at where Captain Wentworth and Charles sat, too horror-struck to talk. She was grateful to have work to occupy her; to sit now, preyed upon by every nervous fancy, every fear, without employment at all, would be dreadful. 

The surgeon came down with the welcome news that  Louisa’s head had received a severe contusion, but he had seen greater injuries recovered from. Her limbs had escaped. Louisa was not to be moved, or to be allowed to exercise or occupy herself with any kind of work once she woke. She was to be bled from the temple every day, followed by the proper emetics, and continual bathing of the head, neck, and face, with vinegar and cold water, accompanied by compresses soaked in the same. He would send along some tinctures to be given her, once she was awake enough to take them.

“Thank God!” exclaimed Captain Wentworth, in such tones Anne was sure she could never forget their tenor; the sight of him, leaning his folded arms on a table, and hiding his face in his hands, as if attempting to calm the overpowering feelings of his soul, by prayer or meditation, so impressed itself in her thoughts that she would never be able to forget the shape of it.

It involuntarily called to mind another incident as painfully lodged within her mind, of the contemptuous bitter way he had taken his leave of her, when she had broken their engagement; the curl of his handsome lip, the tension of his limbs, the look of hurt and offense as he glared at her over his shoulder, and then was gone from her without another word. Anne felt a great inner lowering of spirits at this recollection. They were two very different emotions, but both proof that Captain Wentworth had no room in mind or heart for her, not any more.

“Will you show me how the compress is best to be laid upon Miss Louisa’s contusion?” Anne hurriedly asked the surgeon, hoping any strain in her voice, or tears in her eyes, might be attributed to the painful scene she had just witnessed, or worry over her friend.

The surgeon agreed to this. The relief of having something to do soothed her a great deal; and the knowledge that she was of use was still better. Mrs. Harville had come up with them, and praised Anne’s steadiness of hand when they were on the stairs, leaving the surgeon and the nursery-maid alone upstairs to bleed Louisa, and administer the emetic. “You have some experience nursing, Miss Elliot?”

“Yes. I began rather young. My sister Mary— that is Mrs. Charles Musgrove— has… her health has never been robust. I was always nursing her through some cold or other when we were children. When I was thirteen or so, I nursed our mother when she fell ill, until she… until she died.”

But this was dangerous. Anne knew well how one unhappy memory pulled at others, until they fell down from the high shelves where she had carefully placed them, and lined up about one, a prison of thought from which it felt impossible to escape.

“I know that well,” said Mrs. Harville, with frank sympathy. She paused on the stair to look earnestly at Anne. “I nursed my mother too, when I was not yet twelve, but we were stationed in Bermuda then and everyone had the yellow fever. There was no one else to do it, for my father was a ship’s surgeon and very constantly wanted elsewhere. He took me with him after my mother died, and I only quitted the surgeon’s quarters when Captain Harville— then Lieutenant Harville— thought we might suit. I miss it, strange as it may sound to you, now I have such a large house all my own— to be missing scraping lint in cramped quarters, on a sailing ship, with never enough space for the wounded, but—” She floundered a little, but smiled at Anne. “Harville would say ‘steady, Phoebe, steady!’ Ever since our third child, my mind never settles on one thing, it’s pulled half-a-dozen ways at once. I only meant to say that we shall split the nursing of poor Miss Musgrove. I have missed the duty, so you need not fear you are imposing upon me or the like. And my nursery-maid has been with me since I delivered our eldest, and has nursed all three through measles, and myself through childbed fever; Miss Musgrove will not want for care, day or night.”

Passion and enthusiasm had ever captivated Anne, and this shew of open-hearted generosity touched her deeply. She immediately warmed to Mrs. Harville. 

“I hope you will take me on as a surgeon’s mate,” Anne replied, wishing to repay this friendly overture with one of her own. “I think I could learn a great deal about nursing from you, Mrs. Harville.”

Mrs. Harville brightened. “That is a vast deal too kind, Miss Elliot, but I’ll not turn you off. Let me think where you will stay… it will be cramped quarters— our poor Benwick’s already given up his bedroom—”

They came then to the first floor to hear, through the open door of the parlor, Captain Wentworth saying, “Then it is settled, Musgrove, that you stay, and that I take your sister home. But as to the rest, as to the others, if one stays to assist Mrs. Harville, I think it need be only one. Mrs. Charles Musgrove will, of course, wish to get back to her children; but if Anne will stay… there is no one so capable as Anne."

Mrs. Harville walked ahead, into the parlor, and Anne shut her eyes, standing for a moment in the corridor, salving the wound caused by that ‘thank God!’ with his earnest ‘no one so capable as Anne.’ There was a pain to the pleasure of hearing herself talked of like this by Captain Wentworth. He did not love her, but he did not hate her. He did not think badly of her.

“We were just discussing who will go and who will stay,” said Captain Harville.

"You will stay, I am sure,” said Captain Wentworth as Anne came into the parlor. “You will stay and nurse her—” turning to her and speaking with a glow, and yet a gentleness, which seemed out of the past.

Anne colored deeply.

Captain Wentworth recollected himself and moved away just as she had composure enough to reply, “I am most willing.” To his back she added her soft, “I am ready— happy, really, to remain.” He did not turn, but Anne found herself still addressing him as she stammered, “It is what I have been thinking of— wishing to be allowed to do. I asked Mrs. Harville already, if I might be of service to her, in tending to Louisa.”

“Miss Elliot says she will be my surgeon’s mate,” said Mrs. Harville, with a sort of shy pride. “You are behindhand, Captain Wentworth, I have snatched her up already.”

“Time and tide wait for no—” began Captain Harville.

“Yes,” said Captain Wentworth, his hands clasped behind his back, in command of himself once more. He strode to the door and out of it.

“God bless you for this Anne,” said Charles, passing his hand over his eyes. “My poor mother and father— they will be much relieved to know that you are nursing Louisa. It will be the greatest comfort to them.”

Captain Harville said, “Benwick agreed he would shift quarters elsewhere— the inn perhaps, they’ve no guests at present.”

Captain Benwick, who had folded himself awkwardly into an unoccupied corner of the parlor, nodded and said he would do whatever he could to be of help.

“Perhaps we could put the children up with the maids,” suggested Captain Harville, “or swing a cot somewhere for Miss Elliot and for you, Mr. Musgrove—”

“A bed on the floor of Louisa’s room would be sufficient for me, if Mrs. Harville thinks it fit,” Anne said. Mrs. Harville dimpled at her and Anne had the half-serious, half-fanciful notion that accompanying this declaration with a salute would not have been taken amiss.

“I will go back to the inn,” declared Charles. “I will not put you out more than I have already— I must return to bespeak a chaise for Wentworth to take Henrietta and Mary back. It would take too long for my father’s horses to make the journey, and my father and mother will already be anxious at our delay. I shall let the horses rest and try their speed tomorrow, when I can bring news of how Louisa passed the night.”

Mary had been having hysterics with Henrietta, near the fire, but upon hearing her own name, by degrees became sensible to her husband’s conversation. “Charles, what is this? What are you saying about my going away?”

Charles repeated the plan, unfortunately with praise of Anne’s staying to nurse Louisa.

“What injustice,” cried Mary, “in being expected to go away instead of Anne; Anne, who is nothing to Louisa, while I am her sister, and have the best right to stay in Henrietta's stead! Why am I not to be as useful as Anne?”

Charles protested, “Mary—”

“And to go home without you, too, without my husband!” Mary shook her head. “No, it is too unkind.”

Mrs. Harville sent Anne an uneasy look, one Anne thought meant, ‘I should not like to exchange a surgeon’s mate for another patient.’ Anne went to sit on a low ottoman before the chair Mary had claimed. This appeared to be where Captain Harville sat of an evening and stretched out his leg, for there was a table nearby with half-carved bits of wood, and some sheathed carving knives and whetstones.

“But Mary,” said Anne, taking Mary’s hands in hers and looking up at her tear-stained face, “you have never liked nursing, and you would have to sleep on a cot in Louisa’s room. With your health, do you think you could pass a night like that without discomfort?”

Mary had not considered this, but querulously protested, “If you can, I am sure I can as well.”

“But your nerves are so sensitive, Mary,” said Anne desperately. “You will be in hysterics each time she is bled; you were in hysterics when she fell.”

“And you will not be?”

“You know I will not be.” Anne hit suddenly upon a solution and said, “For you recall how I was able to nurse little Charles, when he broke his collarbone, and you fretted each time you set foot in the sickroom.”

Mary had not liked the idea of sleeping on a cot, and handsomely conceded, “True— you have not a sister’s feelings. Henrietta and I, you see, are in floods of tears, but you are calm; your cheeks are dry.”

Henrietta was still sobbing to herself in a wingback chair, utterly insensible to all that passed about her.

Anne added, “And how can  _ I _ break the news of this to the Musgroves? I am nothing to them, and you are the mother of their grandchildren. You are a daughter to them.”

Mary wavered.

“I cannot in good conscience take on so vitally important a task, being unrelated to the Musgroves.”

“Yes,” said Mary, slowly, “being unrelated you are better suited to nurse Louisa. Yes— yes, I shall return home with Henrietta and Captain Wentworth. The Musgroves deserve to hear of this— everyone deserves to hear of this  _ from  _ a Musgrove. Yes, for you know, the neighborhood will all call upon Uppercross for news— and there must be a Musgrove to answer.”

It pained Anne to hear her sister talk so, as if Mary had already forgotten her concern for Louisa, but at least Mary was persuaded to go. Charles went up to see Louisa once more, and then left, promising to bring Anne’s things from the inn. Benwick went with them; half to support Henrietta, half to bespeak lodgings for himself.

The parlor felt like the aftermath of a thunderstorm; all suddenly calm, and the Harvilles making all neat and orderly. Mrs. Harville rang for a housemaid, and they found a cot to put in Louisa’s room. By then it was time to wash her head, neck, and face with vinegar and cold water, and change the compress — they were to replace them every time the compress dried — and Anne felt less embarrassed that the generous Harvilles had witnessed such a selfish tantrum from her sister. Anne volunteered for the first watch, as Mrs. Harville phrased it, and looked about the room once she was alone with Louisa.

Benwick had a stack of his particular favorite books by the bed; Anne sorted through these. There was a very comfortable armchair between this table and the window, perfectly angled to the light. The room was not large, and with the cot, one nearly had to turn sideways to get from the armchair to the door, but it was as cleverly arranged as the parlor. Anne wondered if this was naval habit, engendered by the smallness of ships’ quarters. She remembered how Captain Wentworth had once described them to her, back when their friendship was first ripening to love; he had taken her hand, pulling her from the chaise in the sitting room of the Monksford Parsonage, and pushed the table and chairs about her, saying, “And here’s the bulkhead— and here the cannon who shall be your bedmate for the duration of the voyage—”

“There is scarcely space enough to turn around in,” Anne had said, attempting to do so, only to find Captain Wentworth before her, and suddenly very close; close enough that she could see the individual lengths of gold braid on his epaulette; close enough that when she looked up at him, their lips nearly met—

Anne turned from the books to check on Louisa. Mrs. Harville had tried to teach her to take a pulse; Anne was not yet skilled enough to find it on the first try, but on the second, she found it, and found it steady. The compress was still damp.

When Anne glanced back at the books, the gilt title of  _ Lyrical Ballads  _ winked up at her from the top of the pile, as if trying to reassure her that despite its different binding, it was still familiar. Anne sank into the verses with the comfort of re-meeting a beloved school fellow unexpectedly. It was a pleasure to begin, as always, with Coleridge’s  _ The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.  _ What an odd poem it was, how very different from all of Wordsworth’s contributions. She never read it without a slightly horrified fascination, wondering how the actual mariners of her acquaintance might react to such a tale. 

Thus the afternoon passed, in reading and tending to Louisa. When Anne rang for a housemaid to help her dress for dinner, Louisa opened her eyes.

“Louisa!” exclaimed Anne. Her relief was beyond expression; she sat on the edge of the bed and pressed Louisa’s hand. “My dear, how are you feeling?”

Louisa squeezed her eyes shut with a sluggish, almost slurred, “I have the head-ache; it pains me dreadfully.”

“Yes, Louisa, you fell,” said Anne, immediately soaking another compress. “Here, let me change your dressing; that will help. And the surgeon has left a tincture for you, and said you may have cold water and toast—”

“You—” Louisa paused, obviously confused. “Not… it. My dressing?”

“I was talking too fast, I fancy. I beg your pardon, Louisa. I am merely glad to see you awake and talking.” Anne removed the compress at Louisa’s temples and applied another. “The surgeon has left a tincture for you; can you sit up and take it?”

It took Louisa half-a-minute to parse the question, then she indicated her willingness to do so, and asked for water as well. Anne was glad to do this, especially as the housemaid came in then, to assist; and Anne was able to go down to dinner with the very good news that Louisa had woken up and taken her tincture, though she had fallen asleep immediately after. Her own voice broke with the relief of this, the joy of Louisa’s recovery, or her start of it, at the pleasure she was able to give all the others. Charles wept at the table, in sheer relief, and tender-hearted Captain Benwick himself looked tearful. Captain and Mrs. Harville made them all temporarily forget their cares, and make merry with some of Mrs. Harville’s orange wine. The convivial spirit was such that when Mrs. Harville suggested Anne linger with them, after dinner, and let the nursery-maid take a turn at Louisa’s bedside, Anne readily agreed. 

It appeared to be their custom in the evening to have Captain Benwick read aloud while the others set to their work. Captain Benwick was a passionate and skilled orator; Anne frequently paused in the mending she had asked to help with, too caught up in Captain Benwick’s reading to be attentive to her task.

The Harville children were also allowed down to listen, and though they could not appreciate a well-crafted metaphor or a bit of symbolism, if Captain Benwick chose a sufficiently picaresque poem, they were eager listeners. The middle child, a solemn little girl of four, made very earnest, very ugly drawings of whatever passed in the poem, as best as she understood it, and very often with the addition of various hideous monsters Lord Byron had shamefully neglected to actually put into the poem.

When Mrs. Harville took the children up, saying she would sit with Louisa until Anne was ready to retire, Captain Benwick shyly turned to Anne, asking what she thought of his rendition of  _ Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage _ . She was warm in her praise, and confessed she had ever loved the sound of Byron’s poetry. “Even on the page, I can hear all he describes— it is a pleasure to hear it read aloud. Byron, I think, is your favorite poet?”

“Yes,” said Captain Benwick, eagerly. “ _ The night-winds sigh, the breakers roar,/ And shrieks the wild sea-mew.’  _ I half hear my first night shipboard, when I was a midshipman.”

Talk of Byron occupied them far longer than Anne had anticipated; she stopped only when she guiltily realized that Captain Harville had finished carving, and now was cheerfully sanding a little wooden practice sword he had made for his eldest child, a boy of six.

“I mean to start teaching our George to fence tomorrow,” said Captain Harville. “Though I may call upon you for help, Benwick. The leg is better than it was, but….”

“Of course, though you would do better to ask Wentworth,” said Captain Benwick. “He always had such a way with the squeakers.”

“True, and he will want employment.” Captain Harville blew away some of the sawdust. “I think he blames himself for Miss Musgrove’s accident.”

“It was not his fault,” said Captain Benwick, “any more than when old what’s-his-name on the  _ Laconia _ — it grieves me to admit that I recall him only as Midshipman Ill-Man—”

“Midshipman Ullman,” said Captain Harville, and saying, jokingly to Anne, “All us lieutenants were constantly saying, ‘that is ill-done, man, do it again.’ But I recall what you mean— our very first action on the  _ Laconia _ , against some French privateers trying to get at some Portuguese merchant ships off the Western Islands. Wentworth commands us all to hold on boarding, to adjust for a groundswell, and what does Midshipman Ullman do but try and leap over, and hit his head on the railing of the  _ Laconia _ .”

Captain Benwick shook his head, smiling, and at Anne’s look of alarm, Captain Harville said, jokingly, “Do not worry yourself, Miss Elliot; Midshipman Ullman had previous few brains to rattle, and after a week fighting the head-ache in sick bay, he was back on deck— much subdued, but in perfect health. I am sure Miss Musgrove will be all set to rights again, after a week. She has more brains than Midshipman Ullman, which might mean more damage, but she has my wife as a nurse— and yourself— which must counteract any damage, no matter how great.”

“But Captain Wentworth blamed himself for the accident?” Anne asked.

“He was just made, and thought it the first casualty under his watch as post-captain; he quite froze up, staring. At first, I thought he couldn’t believe his orders had been countermanded, but now I think it was the shock of it that froze him. Ullman was what, all of twelve? The youngest boy on the ship, and there he was, lying apparently lifeless on the deck. When you get to know Captain Wentworth better, Miss Elliot, you will find that he has a very tender heart. These great shocks can sometimes immobilize him, if he is not prepared for them. He feels things more deeply than most suspect.”

Captain Benwick turned to look into the fire, moved back to melancholy, and said, “Yes— a heart as boundless as the sea. I can think of no greater friend, none so compassionate, so  _ feeling _ , without wishing to ever be  _ thought _ feeling.”

“When you are made post, you shall find it is best to keep the ratings from knowing you have any feelings at all,” joked Captain Harville. “Just as Wentworth and I did.”

Anne recalled the time and went up to take  _ her _ post.

She did not sleep well, for she had never before shared a bedroom in her life, or ever slept on anything less than a feather mattress. It was hard to get comfortable, and every noise woke her. Then, too, her thoughts would not be still. She had rattled the shelves she had built to house them, and they would come crashing down when she least wished for them, open to pages she would sooner have forgotten— living as she was, with the people who loved Frederick Wentworth best in the world, aside from his family and herself.

The morning brought little relief; Anne felt tired and rather low. Charles had come to breakfast with them before setting off to Uppercross, and was at first afraid that this meant Louisa had passed an uneasy night, but Anne gave good report and protested that she was only tired from the shock of the day before, which everyone well understood and believed.

“As your commanding officer,” said Mrs. Harville, trying to unglue her youngest child from where he had quite stuck himself to the breakfast table with marmalade, “I insist you make sure that nursing does not make you ill, and that the shock of yesterday does not upset your humors. The sea air will set you to rights, Miss Elliot.”

“There is no cure like it,” agreed Captain Harville.

Anne ventured to say that she had heard that the Blue Lias cliffs, to the east of the town, were well worth seeing, and, upon being assured that they were, indeed, very interesting, full of strange curios, and no more than a half-hour’s walk, she directed her steps thither.

She chose to walk along the beach, wishing to avoid the Cobb, and was well pleased just walking and looking about her. The waves crashing against the beach, in fine, peacocking displays of sea spray, could have well sustained an hour’s unwearied contemplation. The cliffs themselves were not as Anne anticipated— less solid, with rain and seawater constantly dripping through the soft shale, with rocks frequently crumbling off the cliff face and falling onto the beach. Anne saw some slide onto the beach as she approached, and walked along the lapping edge of the sea to avoid being hit.

Mrs. Harville had said a town industry was collecting all the fallen curios, embedded in the rocks, and selling them to visitors, and Anne idly turned some of the fallen rocks near her, with the toe of her half-boot. She was pleased to discover one, with a strange, coiled spiral within it and picked it up, brushing off the sand. Anne was not entirely sure what it was, but knew Lady Russell had natural philosophers as friends, who might be able to explain it (or at least would be pleased to see such a curio in Lady Russell’s home), and took it back with her.

She was very surprised, when she stepped through the door, to see Captain Wentworth drinking tea at the parlor table with Mrs. Harville. 

“I am back,” said Anne, rather stupidly, afraid somehow, that Captain Wentworth would think her shirking her duty. “I have— I shall go up to Louisa directly. I am sorry to have been so long.”

“You were hardly gone before you came back again,” objected Mrs. Harville. “And it is better you remain here with us and have some tea and a little bread and butter; my nursery-maid is with the surgeon in Miss Musgrove’s room and it is too crowded to admit a third person, especially while they are bleeding her. What have you got there, Miss Elliot?”

“Oh.” Anne felt a little embarrassed to have it, but she held it out as she approached. “I am not sure. I saw it on the beach, below the cliffs.”

Mrs. Harville half-rose from her chair to examine it. “I have seen those for sale about here— you have found a snake stone, Miss Elliot.”

“May I see?” asked Captain Wentworth, unexpectedly.

Anne gave it to him at once, and took a seat by Mrs. Harville.

Captain Wentworth turned it about in his hands. “I see why they call it that; it does look like a snake coiled.”

“Yes,” said Anne, a little surprised. “Yes— I think— there were some for sale, by the inn. Only those had heads.”

“Painted on or carved on.” Mrs. Harville put a teacup before Anne. “Do you take milk and sugar, Miss Elliot?”

“Both,” said Captain Wentworth, a little absently. Then, looking up to see Anne and Mrs. Harville looking at him, clarified, with an air of faint confusion, “From what I recall. That is, I believe the snake stones at the inn had carved heads at the end of the spirals, and the whole thing was painted.”

“I take milk and sugar,” said Anne, absurdly disappointed. 

Captain Wentworth surprised her, however, by addressing her directly. “I think it looks rather more like a ram’s horn, than a snake. Do you not think so, Miss Elliot?”

“Oh, I— I had no notion of what it was; I was half inclined to think it some natural formation in the rock, that inspired the golden ratio.” She was not sure if Mrs. Harville knew what that was, and added, “The more I look at it, the more I am reminded of your little girl’s monster drawings, Mrs. Harville.”

“A nautilus,” declared Captain Wentworth, suddenly. “This put me in mind of something I had seen before, but it escaped me until you said that, Miss Elliot. I do not recall if you ever sailed in the South Pacific, Mrs. Harville?”

She poured out Anne’s tea. “No, I have been all about the Atlantic, but never the Pacific.”

“What is a nautilus?” asked Anne.

“It is a variety of squid,” said Captain Wentworth, glancing at her. “But it lives in a spiral shell such as this, and also in the South Pacific— last I saw these, I was a mid. An odd creature, the nautilus. All its tentacles are at the end of the spiral here.” He pointed at it.

Captain Harville, Captain Benwick, and all the children came in then; fresh from what appeared to have been a very sandy and not very productive attempt at fencing. Captain Wentworth called upon Captain Benwick and Captain Harville to look Anne’s curio and say whether it reminded them of a nautilus as well.

“Oh aye,” said Captain Harville. “I never liked those; especially since we caught one and served it at table, since we were so tired of salt beef. You recall that, Wentworth, I am sure you do.”

“It was not a dish I would dine on a second time,” agreed Captain Wentworth.

“Never liked how they moved either. All those tentacles fluttering, looking like legs pushing them away.”

Captain Benwick made Anne smile by quoting Coleridge, “ _ Yea slimy things did crawl with legs, upon the slimy sea.” _

No one else caught the allusion; Captain Benwick turned with a half-shrug to Anne, who took the curio back, thinking to herself, ‘ _ A thousand slimy things lived on— and so did I. _ ’


	2. In which Captain Wentworth Lends a Helping Hand

Louisa woke intermittently that afternoon, less confused each time. When Anne asked if she recalled what had happened and where she was, Louisa could reply, with a growing degree of confidence, “I fell on the Cobb and am at Captain Harville’s.” 

Anne came down to the parlor and told this to the surgeon. He had returned that afternoon for the express purpose of cupping Louisa’s temples and neck to restore her senses. He was very pleased. Louisa need not be cupped at all. The bleeding and emetics had done their work. A full week of such and then a week or two thereafter of bedrest, and she might be fully restored to herself.

“You see,” said Captain Harville, as the rest of the company expressed their relief in exclamations and tears, “I was telling Benwick and Miss Elliot only last night that a week of treatment and all would be well. Should she be bled again if she is responding to it?” 

The question had been directed to Mrs. Harville, rather than the surgeon. She replied, “My father says time is the best physick, beyond all the powers of man. It would do more harm than good to rush a course of treatment.”

“Quite right,” said the surgeon, well-pleased with Mrs. Harville. “Your father was a naval surgeon, I believe you mentioned? Pray what is his name?”

The two of them fell to talking and Anne sank into a chair at the table, squeezing her eyes closed against tears of relief. She was not now required to report or to think; she could allow herself a little interval of time to feel. When she opened them, Captain Wentworth was suddenly coming towards her and saying to her in low, moved tones, “I know we owe this to  _ you _ more than any other; Louisa first opened her eyes and talked to  _ you,  _ and you have been her chief nurse these past two days.”

Anne flushed at his praise and at the warm, appreciative look that accompanied it, and fell upon some cliché, she knew not what, to cover the curious blankness in her thoughts.

“Anyone might have done the same, but only  _ you  _ did,” said Captain Wentworth, impatiently sweeping aside the tails of his coat to take a chair angled towards her. “I speak feelingly, as the author of Miss Musgrove’s downfall. I am convinced you were the saving of her.” He spoke so low she had leaned towards him, instinctively; he had only to move his arm a little to press her left hand and say, in low, rough tones, “God bless you for it, Anne.”

Lady Russell had once taken Anne to a salon, where their host— a fellow of the Royal Society— had demonstrated some scientific principle Anne no longer quite recalled, by touching an eel and then taking Anne’s hand. The electric shock that had then rocketed through her was nothing to the touch of Captain Wentworth’s hand, after a gap of eight years. 

Anne’s breath caught. She stared at his bare hand on hers. Anne marveled that that this had ever once been a familiar liberty, granted gladly, and as frequently as possible. From this, it was easy to fall prey to a thousand remembrances, each overlaid upon the other, like the layering of steel to make a knife, which sharpened the sensation until it was almost painful. She was surprised— and then surprised at herself for being surprised— to find his hand had not changed. His grip was as warm and as firm; she could still see the faint pale scar between thumb and forefinger from when he had once grabbed a privateer’s sword and turned it away before the blade could sink into his shoulder. 

One of the housemaids opened the parlor door. “If’n you please, Mrs. Harville, there is a Mr. Hayter here for you.”

Captain Wentworth looked up and then, realizing he was still holding Anne’s hand, hastily released it and rose, to greet Charles Hayter. 

Anne sat immobile for half-a-second, staring at the space where Captain Wentworth had been, her left hand still slightly curved, as if he still held it, before going to greet Mr. Hayter with all the others. Mr. Hayter had come to obtain news of Louisa, while all the Musgroves tried to ready themselves to come to Lyme. He would return to Uppercross the next morning. The Harvilles welcomed Mr. Hayter and regretted only that they had no where for him to stay; the Harvilles could not precisely give up their room with the captain’s leg being what it was, Louisa was in Benwick’s bed with Anne on a cot beside her, and Mr. Hayter would not have fit in the children’s bed.

“Captain Benwick and I are fixed at the inn,” said Captain Wentworth. “We would welcome a third.”

Mr. Hayter expressed himself pleased at this— possibly, Anne thought unhappily, because it was clear that Captain Wentworth now meant to marry Louisa, not Henrietta— and asked both after Louisa, and if he might be of any help.

The surgeon was called upon to give his prognosis once more and Anne felt more kindly inclined to Charles Hayter than ever before when he asked, “If you and Louisa are to stay here for a fortnight at least, Miss Elliot, is there anything you need from Uppercross or the cottage? Henrietta thought you might not have sufficient clothes and said you were to send a list to her, of everything you and Louisa might need. My uncle and aunt Musgrove said their pantry and stores are open to you, for whatever the surgeon says Louisa may eat. I will convey your requests back to Uppercross myself and then my cousin Charles will bring everything to you when he returns to Lyme.”

“I can certainly write out a list for you to take back. Oh and—” she could not help a self-conscious look at Captain Wentworth “—and in two days I was to go to Lady Russell.”

Captain Wentworth turned then, to look at her, and Anne could not bear to meet his gaze. She forced herself to look Mr. Hayter in the eye. “That is not to be thought of now; I cannot leave Louisa until she is well again. Will you convey a letter to Lady Russell for me, saying so?”

Mr. Hayter indicated his willingness.  

“You must stay and dine with us,” said Captain Harville. “We were going to sit down to it once the surgeon left; and if you will wait a little before going to the inn after dinner, Miss Elliot can write out her list.”

The Harvilles kept a simple but very lively table, and Anne could not remember a dinner half as good in Kellynch at its finest. The conversation was always lively and kindly. There were no cutting little questions, no sneeringly polite jockeying for supremacy over one’s dinner partners. There were only kindly disposed people with a good deal to say to each other, and a great inclination to be pleased with whatever they heard. 

Captain Benwick fell into step beside her, when they all moved to the parlor (it not being the Harvilles’ habit for ladies and gentlemen to separate after dinner). “Shall I leave off  _ Childe Harold _ , until you have written your letters and lists, Miss Elliot?”

“I should be very grateful, if you would. I confess, I should not like to miss your reading it. It gave me such pleasure last evening.”

Captain Benwick looked highly gratified; Anne fancied he had not read to anyone who took a real interest in poetry in some time. “Of course. I shall find something a bit shorter, for the children. Or—” he turned to her, once again shy, hesitating long enough he fell behind her and had to rush a little to catch up with her “—is there some poem you have read often enough that hearing it will not distract you?”

“Any of the  _ Lyrical Ballads _ ,” replied Anne. “Or— do you know Matthew Prior’s  _ Henry and Emma _ ?”

“I do.”

“That would be long enough to give me time to write, and I think the children might like all of Henry’s disguises.”

“Little Emma—” this being the Harville’s middle child “—will like hearing a poem with her name in it.” 

“I should very much enjoy hearing it read aloud. I have only ever read it silently, to myself.”

Captain Benwick looked very pleased and went at once into the parlor, to rifle through his volumes. Anne was amused at his alacrity, at this proof of how badly Captain Benwick had wanted an audience who could truly appreciate what he was reading. However, she soon regretted he had gone ahead; her shawl had tangled on one of Captain Harville’s carvings, and was falling off her shoulder. She could not free it without letting the other side of her shawl drop on the floor.

A hand reached out from behind her and deftly untangled the fringe from all the intricate bits of the carving. Anne caught a glimpse of the scar going across the back of the hand between thumb and forefinger, but before she could thank Captain Wentworth, he had moved past her to the joyous acclaim of the Harville children. He was a great favorite of theirs, and he seemed wholly absorbed by them and their concerns.

Mrs. Harville was a great letter writer and provided Anne with all necessary materials, and helped Anne with a list for the Musgroves while Captain Benwick searched his shelves. For Louisa, they need send only for linens and nightgowns, and perhaps some arrowroot, if the Musgroves had some laid by. “There is nothing better for an invalid’s stomach,” opined Mrs. Harville, “but because it is, it is very dear and I cannot get it myself very easily. I hope they may find it at the markets of Uppercross, if they do not have some already.”

Anne’s own list was easily completed within the opening stanzas of  _ Henry and Emma _ , but once Captain Benwick got to the heart of the poem, Anne fell behind on her letter to Lady Russell.

_ Henry and Emma _ was one of Anne’s favorite poems because it went against the usual narrative, of an inconstant woman breaking the heart of some worthy man. Henry, after courting his lady love in a variety of disguises, and having won her heart, decided to test it, by saying he was banished. Emma agreed to face any hardship with him, even though he spent several pages describing the increasingly uncomfortable realities of banishment, whereupon he declared he was really in love with someone else. Emma rather magnificently got over the shock of this by offering to go with him as this other lady’s servant. The willingness to put aside her own self-interest, for the sake of the man she loved, at last convinced Henry, and he admitted this was all a ruse. If Anne read the poem with certain painful scenes of her own history in mind, or certain regrets— well, at least she did not  _ hear _ them in Captain Benwick’s reading.

She had risen a moment to find her snake stone— one of the Harville children had been playing with it while Captain Benwick searched through his library— and heard her name.

“I beg your pardon, I was not attending.” She was at an angle to the others, who were charmingly grouped by the fire. She faced Captain Harville, who was in his usual chair, working on a fishing net. She saw, in profile, Mrs. Harville and her sons on the chaise. The elder boy was half hanging over the arm of the chaise, untangling a knot in the fishing net, and the baby indifferent to everything but his necklace of coral teething beads. Anne saw the back of Mr. Hayter’s head; he had pulled up one of the wooden chairs from the table and fit it between the chaise and Captain Benwick’s chair. Captain Benwick had half-leaned out of his wingback chair to address her. 

Captain Wentworth had seated himself cross-legged on the floor, just before the fire, with little Emma sitting in his lap, and her drawing board, paper, and pencil spread over her knees. 

Captain Benwick cleared his throat. “If you— if you are done with your letter, perhaps you might read Emma’s part, Miss Elliot.”

Anne tore her eyes from Captain Wentworth, flushing. At least Wentworth hadn’t seen her; he was busy helping little Emma draw something (most likely a sea monster). “Oh I— I rose only to fetch the curio; I wanted to send it on to Lady Russell, for she takes an interest in natural philosophy. And I am sure I cannot read with even a third of your skill, Captain Benwick.”

“Oh come, Miss Elliot,” said Mrs. Harville, “you have such a lovely speaking voice; I am sure you will read just as well.”

Captain Harville said, “Yes, do help poor Captain Benwick, and rest your hand a little,” and accompanied this with such a look as to remind her of how two days ago, he had mentioned how much Captain Benwick needed company and what good she had done him by making him talk so much. 

“It would give me— give us all great pleasure, to hear you read,” said Captain Benwick, almost as if to prove Captain Harville right. 

“If everyone promises not to expect as good a performance, I shall do my poor best.” Mr. Hayter, with more gallantry than usual, offered Anne his chair, and rose to lean on the mantle. Anne took the book and began nervously, for she did not often speak what she felt aloud, and had never read this poem without a great deal of feeling. She had first come across it after breaking her engagement, and had often returned to it when in the same low spirits and afflicted with all the more difficult emotions attending heartbreak. It was a relief to pass the book back to Captain Benwick, after Emma’s first speech, but as the poem continued, she grew less stilted, less fearful of betraying herself, and if she did not read with Captain Bewick’s  _ sturm und drang,  _ true feeling enlivened her usual soft and gentle tone enough to well entertain the others. 

At the end the company politely applauded, and Anne looked at everyone but Captain Wentworth, though she could feel his eyes upon her. She had felt his eyes upon her every time she read. Having voiced so often that of all mankind she loved but one alone, before the fixed gaze of the one she still loved, she felt almost fragile, like badly baked porcelain with cracks already running through it. One good jostle and she might shatter.

Fortunately, Mr. Hayter and the Harvilles were rather prosaic in their remarks. After praising her and Benwick’s reading, Mrs. Harville observed, “That young man expects too much from poor Emma. If you told me you loved someone younger and fairer, John, I would have used some very unmaidenly language about that other lady, instead of offering to act as her servant.” 

Captain Harville laughed. “I daresay any real woman would not long remain engaged to a man after he said she was old and ugly and he’d found someone younger and fairer, or at least, no woman of sense. But thank you, Miss Elliot, you do read very feelingly. Don’t you think so, Wentworth?”

Captain Wentworth said instead, to Emma, “There you are, now just trace over the dashed lines I made for you, and you will have signed your drawing with your own name.” Emma stuck her tongue out of the corner of her mouth and laboriously did so, before nodding at the page in satisfaction, and then thrusting it at Anne. 

“Is it for me?” Anne asked, taking it with a delighted laugh.  

Emma nodded. 

“I do not recollect the part where Emma threatened to kill half-a-dozen sea monsters to prove her love, but I do think the poem would be much the better for it.” Anne looked fondly at the drawing. “Thank you. I shall fold it up and keep it in my own copy of  _ Henry and Emma _ when I go home.”

“They are naughties,” little Emma pointed out.

“Yes, very naughty monsters indeed, attacking poor Emma.”

“She means she has drawn you a nautilus,” said Captain Wentworth. “Or a whole flock of nautili, after your snake stone.”

“Captain Wentworth helped,” said Emma, fairly. 

“How very kind,” said Anne, rather touched— not merely by the picture, but by the picture presented by Emma and Captain Wentworth. It occurred to her that if they had married when intended, Captain Wentworth would have been helping  _ their  _ daughter write her name and draw strange sea creatures. Oh why had he ever pressed her hand? It had only reminded her of all she had lost and now she was primed to fill in with light, color, and shadow, the outlines absence created. She could vividly see, now, the life she would have had with him— the friends, the children, the everyday  _ tenderness _ —

Anne told herself that the touch of his hand had affected her because she was rarely touched. No member of her family ever thought to embrace her or even touch her shoulder when passing behind her, and Lady Russell was not physically demonstrative. Anne seized on the thought of Lady Russell and rose, turning her back on the company before she could weep from the longing to remain with them, from the pain of fully feeling all that she had lost. “I really must finish my letter to Lady Russell, so that you are not going back to the inn in the utter darkness. Please excuse me.” 

That evening, she slept more poorly than the night before, for she could not help her tears. The full knowledge of exactly what her life was not and could never be lacerated her soul. The woman in the bed next to her would have the life Anne desperately wanted herself. But this was unfair to Louisa, who had as much a right to happiness as Anne. Louisa deserved all marital and familial felicity; she did not, could not know how all Anne’s hopes of happiness were pinned on Captain Wentworth. Anne endeavored to tell herself that if Captain Wentworth was happy so she could be. To assist in securing his happiness, to tend to the woman he now loved— oh Matthew Prior had made such a sacrifice sound easy in his poem, and in a way, it was. Anne would sooner cut off her hand than use it to do any harm to Louisa Musgrove. But how much it pained her to envision Captain Wentworth playing with his and Louisa Musgrove’s child!

Anne had mastered the art of crying without making noise during her unhappy time at school in Bath, and was glad not to wake Louisa, for later, Louisa had a troubled night. Louisa often woke, agitated, and could not be persuaded to sleep again for several minutes. The only thing that seemed to help was when being read to. If Anne read very slowly, and if she read something that Louisa had read before, Louisa could follow it, and become lost enough in the story to be soothed. 

At breakfast Anne asked Mrs. Harville about this, and Mrs. Harville thought it alarming only in that it meant Anne had not had enough sleep.

“I do not mind it, when it means Louisa is recovering,” said Anne. “And I think that if I walk a little, I will be better directly. I find the sea air very refreshing.”

“It’ll put some color back into your cheeks,” agreed Mrs. Harville. “But perhaps it is best you do not walk all the way to the cliffs and back again, if you are tired.”

“Is there a library in town? Louisa has never been a great reader of poetry, and I think she might be more engaged by a novel.”

Captain Harville said, “Mrs. Harville and I are not great readers; I am afraid we could not tell you. I am sure Benwick will volunteer to take you as soon as you say the word ‘library.’” He looked fondly at Anne. “I really cannot tell you how much good you have done Benwick, making him talk so much. We do our best, but we cannot talk with him on what truly interests him, as you can. Mrs. Harville was just saying to me, last night, when we were in bed, that our poor Benwick is finally talking as he used to, back before….” 

Mrs. Harville reached across the table and took his hand. 

Captain Harville forced a smile. “Yes, well. He is not of a disposition to ever get over the loss of our poor Fanny, but he is much more himself. You have worked wonders on both your patients, Miss Elliot.” 

Captains Benwick and Wentworth came in, and Captain Benwick could say at once where the library was and how far away it was. Anne was amused by this, and how eagerly he offered to accompany her. 

“Be sure to take Miss Elliot by the other inn, where the Annings have a table,” said Mrs. Harville. To Anne she said, “They are the principal curio vendors in this area. Or so I believe. Have I got that right, Hannah?”

The head parlor maid paused in collecting the breakfast dishes. “Yes, ma’am. Miss Mary Anning finds all manner of snake stones and devil’s fingers and and vertaberries, and once found a whole sea monster. My brother is a footman for Mr. Henley and says that Mr. Henley bought it for  _ twenty-three pounds  _ and displays the monster in  _ London _ .”

The library was attached to the small, shut-up assembly room, but commanded a lovely view of the sea, down the Isle of Portland, and had a wide selection of novels. Anne selected two or three of the most popular, in hopes that Louisa had read at least one of them, and hid a smile as she saw Captain Benwick looking for the volumes of essays and collections of letters she had recommended to him. He only found one of the titles and therefore insisted on carrying her books, and offered her his free arm in a manner which made Anne quite convinced Captain Harville was wrong in saying that Captain Benwick would never get over the loss of Fanny Harville.

Captain Benwick had no real interest in the curios, but obligingly took her to the other inn in Lyme, where a young girl, no more than sixteen or seventeen, set out a great selection of curios upon a table. A black and white terrier sat wagging its tail at her feet. 

The girl greeted them with a, “Captain, buy your missus a part of Lyme to take home with her? You’ll not have seen the like of my fossils anywhere in your travels.”

“Oh, I am, er— merely escorting Miss Elliot,” stammered out Captain Benwick, and got so embarrassed, he had to hide his face in  _ Evelina.  _

Anne smiled and approached. “I am very interested in your curios— you call them fossils?”

“Yes, ma’am. That is what Dr. William Buckland calls ‘em.” This was said as if Anne should of course recognize Dr. William Buckland. “He is a Fellow at Corpus Christi. At  _ Oxford _ .”

Anne dimly recalled some gentleman of this description being talked of by Lady Russell. “In... undergroundology?"

"Mineralogy, ma'am." Miss Anning went behind the table and spread her arms, as proud of her fossils as an artist of their work. “Though these are not minerals. Dr. Buckland says these are creatures killed in the Great Flood. Here is what we call a cornemonius, though Dr. Buckland says it is an ammonite _. _ ” She gestured to a large, beautifully complete spiral, completely freed from the rock. 

“A snake stone,” said Anne. 

“Yes ma’am— and these here are vertaberries, though properly they are vertebrae, from the spine of some great creature.” 

“May I…?”

Miss Anning nodded. Anne curiously turned them over, staring at them, trying to imagine what creature, living in Lyme before the flood, might have looked like. She asked if Miss Anning had ever found a full creature, and Miss Anning nodded again. “Three years ago I found a sort of crocodile, though the learned gentlemen in London says it cannot be a crocodile, since it looks more like a fish and is a full seventeen feet long.” 

Anne could not conceive of an animal on this scale, even when Miss Anning showed her some teeth and made a little sketch of it on the back of one of Anne’s calling cards. At length she recalled Captain Benwick waiting behind her, and Louisa back at the Harvilles’ home. She glanced at Captain Benwick, who had become absorbed in his book. Anne gently called his name and he guiltily lowered the volume.

“We had best be getting back, Captain Benwick— although….” It would be churlish to have taken up so much of Miss Anning’s time without purchasing anything. Anne picked one of the teeth, thinking little Emma might like it, and then an ammonite small enough that her father might like to display it in his curio cabinet. It had not the series of chambers, building on each other in a spiral, that had fascinated Anne in the curio she had sent onto Lady Russell, but it looked very complete, and was not embedded in any rock.

When they returned, it had begun to rain, and Mrs. Harville was running to and fro with the maids, trying to bring in the nearly dried laundry before their work was spoilt. As the surgeon and the nursery-maid were with Louisa again, the captains and the children were in the parlor. Captain Wentworth was painstakingly teaching George a proper fencing stance, and Captain Harville, with one eye on the baby, sleeping in a little hammock he had rigged between the arm of the chaise and the arm of his chair, was carving little Emma a monster to her specifications. 

“More teeth,” Emma said, holding onto the free arm of her father’s chair and hanging backwards, apparently for the fun of it.

“How many more teeth, my dear? It already is mostly teeth.”

“More,” insisted Emma. 

“I might help with that,” said Anne, holding out the tooth to Emma. Emma regarded it wide-eyed, and George dropped his sword to come see too. 

“Come back with more curios, eh Miss Elliot?” asked Captain Harville. “I shall have to net you a bag, so you are not always having to carry them home in your hands. What is this tooth from?”

“There is a gentleman from Oxford who says it comes from a creature drowned in the flood.”

Captain Wentworth came over too, and looked at it with real interest. “May I?”

Anne handed him the tooth; and tried to hide how the brush of his fingers against her own sent a shiver through her by saying hastily, “Miss Anning said she once found a huge crocodile, on the beach, below the cliffs. I suppose the tooth must be from a similar creature.”

“It is like no crocodile tooth I’ve ever seen.”

Emma stared at Captain Wentworth, looking utterly betrayed. “What! You have seen a crocodile?  _ I  _ have never seen a crocodile.”

Captain Wentworth laughed. “After the Battle of the Nile, which was before your mother ever met your father. Otherwise I would have brought you with me to see it. Miss Elliot, did I ever tell you of when I saw a crocodile?”

“You have told me of the Battle of the Nile,” Anne said uncertainly. “But not of any crocodiles. I had thought you too occupied by the French to see much of the wildlife.”

Captain Wentworth had not lost the knack of storytelling he had always had, of being able to talk of objectively terrifying events with sang-froid, wit, and spirit. She listened with a fascination she felt no impulse to hide. Everyone else listened too. From time to time, Captain Wentworth would look at her—not with all the heat he used to, but with more warmth than he had since they had first seen each other earlier that fall.

At length, Anne tore herself away. Louisa was awake and very miserable; she told Anne, rather slowly, and with frequent pauses, as she searched for the words, that she had begun to dread the surgeon’s visits. The treatment was worse than the head-ache and the contusion. She hated the bleeding. She hated the emetics even more. 

Fortunately, Anne had picked a novel Louisa had read before, and Louisa was able to be distracted by it, and follow it. But she could not concentrate on it very long; she drifted off often, leaving Anne to stare out the window, at the dock and the shore, and the sea beyond. She felt as she would never grow weary of the sea; she could look upon it happily all her days. This brought the melancholy reflection that this was not likely, and Anne retreated into the familiar solace of  _ Marmion.  _

‘ _ Like the dew on the mountain, _ ’ Anne read to herself, glancing out the window and seeing Captain Wentworth walking along the shore, hands clasped behind his back, _ ‘like the foam on the river; like the bubble on the fountain— thou art gone, and gone forever. _ ’

After dinner, Anne had felt too melancholy for poetry and entreated Mrs. Harville to teach her to knit. Mrs. Haville was a merry and a patient teacher who seemed very flattered, still, that anyone wanted to learn anything from her. Anne listened with half-an-ear to  _ Childe Harolde,  _ until Captain Benwick drew her into a debate over whether  _ Childe Harolde  _ deserved its place at the foremost poem of the age, and then grew inattentive to her task. As the Harvilles had last read Southey’s  _ Life of Nelson  _ and had not picked up anything since, they occupied themselves with their knitting and their netting, happy in that the rest of their circle was happy. Captain Wentworth joined in this debate, and though he did not argue the merits of different rhythmic meters or the glory of a well-realized enjambment, he could talk eloquently and persuasively of character, plot, and setting, and Anne felt almost an echo of how they had talked to each other in the past.

When they had done arguing over Byron’s fame, Anne was charmed to discover that Captain Harville had indeed netted her a bag for her fossils, and made use of it the next day. Louisa had slept a little better, and consequently so had Anne, until Louisa woke at six-o-clock, with a gasp, and wept on Anne’s shoulder an hour until Anne had rocked her to sleep again, and Anne decided that, since she was awake, she might as well walk down the beach before breakfast. The wind whipped furiously at her cloak, snatching at the hem of her dress and rounding out the fabric, making Anne feel as if she was a ship, her gown a full-bellied sail, sending her gliding onwards

The sunrise over the sea enchanted her, the pinks and silvers chasing away the usual blues, filling up the reflective pools of sea and sky in a magnificent display of symmetry. There was such beauty here, thought Anne. How small a thing her heartbreak seemed, when she was witness to such a glorious meeting of the infinite— endless sea and boundless sky, awash in light. The cliffs, pastel in the early sunlight, were lovely even at a distance. As she approached, Anne could then distinguish between all the variegated shades of soft pinks, all the stacked layers of rock, and the hints of strange creatures lurking deeper within the mountain.

After watching the play of light a while, and making sure that no rocks fell or looked likely to fall, Anne saw something jutting out of the cliff itself. The light, refracted off of the sea, sent an iridescent sheen over the protrusion. 

Anne ventured closer to the cliff face. It was difficult to tell what this curio was, for it clearly belonged to a fuller shape, deeper in the rock, though she knew not what. Anne walked around it, staring at the five lines of… perhaps they were vertaberries? But for a creature with possibly five spines, it did not strike her with fear or horror; it seemed almost friendly, that they were all gathered together like that. By straining and standing on tiptoe Anne could only just touch the bottom-most fossil. It felt very firmly embedded in the rock. 

She turned over several fallen stones below the fossil, and finding nothing, she returned through the town. Perhaps Miss Anning was at her table already and could give some explanation for it. 

“Miss Elliot!” 

Anne turned, her net bag swinging at her wrist, to see Captain Wentworth hailing her, from the other side of the street.

He crossed at once, saying, “Good morning; I had not expected to see you this early.”

“I woke at six and could not sleep again.”

Captain Wentworth, now standing before her, nodded. “I woke early too. I find that when I have spent a night thinking of horrors, the best treatment is a sunrise over the sea. That is a beauty beyond nearly anything.”

“You really must not blame yourself,” said Anne. “Louisa was determined to jump.”

Captain Wentworth looked down and away from her. “Would she have been determined if I had not been weak?”

Anne impulsively reached a hand to him and then grew too overpowered by the consciousness of her past, by the bleakness of her probable future to do more than touch a loose fold of blue broadcloth at his elbow, to comfort him and to make him look at her again. “Yes, probably. At sea, I know, all wills must bow to that of the captain’s, all responsibility must fall on him; but on land each creature is allowed the exercise of free will to a not unlimited degree, but to a greater extent. It was no one’s fault. Everyone acted as they thought best.”

“And yet it ended in such tragedy.”

“Not permanently.”

Captain Wentworth turned to look at the sea; Anne pressed on, addressing the fluttering capes of his great-coat, “She will recover. The surgeon says once the week is over she may come down to the parlor and visit with everyone. You will see then that she is well— and… I think, perhaps, you are so haunted because the last time you saw her, you saw her lifeless. Once you see Louisa is breathing, and mending, your spirits will improve.” 

Captain Wentworth looked over his shoulder at her at her, his hands linked behind his back, naval-style. The glare from the sea where the sun was still rising, and the brim of his bicorn cast his face into shadow. She could not make out his expression when he said, “Physick for us all, eh Miss Elliot? Yesterday afternoon, both Harvilles told me how much you had already helped Captain Benwick. And last night, as we were going back to the inn, Captain Benwick spoke only of you, only in praises of you, moreover, which seemed to prove it.”

It was said lightly enough, but Anne did not know if this was praise or censure, or what motive had inspired it. “I am always glad to help where I can. And I think Captain Benwick has dwelt overlong with those who think in prose, while he thinks in verse. He would speak highly of anyone who joined him in a couplet.”

Captain Wentworth turned, his face no longer in shadow. His expression was still odd; rather inward, but half-smiling. “Are you headed towards the cliffs, Miss Elliot?”

“Oh no, returning.”

“You have gone already?” Captain Wentworth asked, sounding disappointed.

“I thought it would inconvenience everyone least this way.”

“Ah. I had hoped to walk with you after breakfast, and find one of these crocodiles for myself.” 

Anne could not hide her pleasure at this idea. “I saw some kind of strange creature in the cliff this morning. I should be glad to walk back and show it to you, for the Harvilles will not dine for another hour yet, and I really have no idea what it is.”

“Here be dragons,” said Captain Wentworth. 

Anne could not help recalling the first time he had said that to her, when she had expressed a wish of his showing her, on the large and previously untouched book of maps in her father’s library, the routes of his voyages. Anne had been totally ignorant of anywhere outside of Somersetshire; Captain Wentworth had teased her, “And I suppose you think that each time there is a dragon in the corner you think they live in that part of the sea?” Then, softening to her, reaching to point at an illustration, his pointing finger resting near her hand, which held down the page, “Fear not, Miss Elliot. They are symbols of the unknown.”

Captain Wentworth glanced at a puddle in their way and offered her his white gloved hand. 

Anne slowly reached out and took it. 

It occurred to her then, why the fossils in the cliff that morning seemed friendly.

They had seemed almost a hand extended towards her own.


	3. In Which There's Finally Huddling for Warmth

The morning passed away half in a dream. Anne had thought there would be a perpetual and total estrangement between herself and Captain Wentworth, but he had spoken to her, if not with total ease, at least with great civility while on the beach. He had been roused to such interest at the sight of the fossil emerging from the cliff that he walked with her to Miss Anning’s table, and sat next to her at breakfast, to speculate on what the creature could be. Anne tried not to be wholly absorbed in him and their discussion, but she grew almost insensible to the others in the room, coming only to herself when Captain Benwick asked if Louisa was at all better. Anne was ashamed to have been caught trying to breathe life into a long-dead habit of the past; a mode of conversing with Captain Wentworth that she knew she could never have again. 

She went upstairs at once to finish reading  _ Evelina  _ to Louisa. Louisa had read  _ Evelina  _ before and could therefore follow it, but could not concentrate long enough on any of the other novels Anne attempted to read aloud. Any sudden noise or movement startled Louisa, disrupting her thoughts and making her forget whatever she had just heard.

“I feel wretched when you are taking such pains to distract me from my low spirits,” said Louisa, fretting with the bedlinens, “but I cannot make heads or tails of this novel  _ either _ . The sentences go on too long.”

“Perhaps now you are getting on so well, a little poetry might better entertain you. A shorter line might be easier for you— and, you know, the rhyme scheme can help you keep track of the story.”

Anne went down to find a book of poetry, and saw that the others were all busily employed. Captain Wentworth set aside his newspaper when she entered, his gaze a little anxious. “How is your patient, Miss Elliot?”

“She is much better than she has been all week,” said Anne. “Very fretful, but she is awake now, and talking rationally, if not always coherently.”

Mrs. Harville looked up from the letter she was writing. “I thought as much! A week of treatment and she would be restored to herself. It never does to rush a recovery.”

“Mrs. Harville is always right about these things,” said Captain Harville, attempting to remove a woodchip from the baby’s mouth. The baby was not inclined to give up such a delicious and forbidden treat and was putting up as determined a fight as Nelson at Trafalgar. “When I first was sent home with my leg torn ragged from splinters, I thought the whole thing would have to come off, but she took one look at it, told me exactly how to preserve it, and here it is, still attached.” 

Mrs. Harville looked fondly at her husband, before turning more fully to Anne. “Does the head-ache still trouble Miss Musgrove?” 

“No; I think her chief affliction at present is boredom.”

It was not much of a joke, but everyone wished for the relief of laughter, and chuckled at it.

“I think the novels are too much of a strain for her, at present.” 

“It is too bad there is no instrument,” said Captain Wentworth. 

“I never learnt to play, so we never thought to seek lodgings with an instrument,” said Mrs. Harville. “I know  _ you  _ are wild for music, but unless you play it, I do not know who would entertain Miss Musgrove that way.”

“Miss Elliot plays very well,” said Captain Wentworth. He turned to Captain Harville. “I wish you could hear how she plays Beethoven’s  _ Pathetique,  _ Harville. Never a false note or a false feeling. And I have never heard anyone play that codetta at the end of the first movement better.” 

Anne colored. She had played for him very often when they had first known each other, as Captain Wentworth’s sincere love of music meant he had actually asked her to play the sonatas no one else would hear all the way though. Was he remembering her playing eight years ago? Since they had re-met, Captain Wentworth had not had many occasions to hear her play. Anne only ever played dances at Uppercross— through when she could, she liked to steal a half-hour with the neglected piano-forte in Mary’s cottage. She had often walked out of the sitting room, where the piano was, to see guests in the parlor— for Mary never  _ would  _ think to let Anne know when they had visitors— but she had always assumed the visitors had not been listening to her. Anne did not know which would be the more astonishing explanation— that Captain Wentworth had remembered her playing after so long, or that he had bothered to listen to her now.

Captain Harville said, “Ah, that’s a lovely one, the  _ Pathetique _ , but I always like the Moonlight sonata better.”

“You have no taste,” Captain Wentworth said fondly. 

“I did not know you were fond of music, Captain Harville,” said Anne, a little overwhelmed. 

“It was hard to avoid becoming so,” said Captain Harville. “Wentworth and I were both mids on Lucky Jack Aubrey’s ship, the  _ Sophie _ . Captain Aubrey was always scraping away on that violin of his, with the surgeon playing the cello—ah ha!” He at last wrested the woodchip away and threw it into the fire. 

Anne felt a strong desire to be alone, in order to sort through the confused feelings Captain Wentworth’s compliment had evoked, and said hastily, “I had come down thinking to read Louisa some poetry.”

“Captain Benwick can help you there,” said Mrs. Harville. 

Captain Benwick had been sitting in the window seat, wholly absorbed in a book, and looked up in confusion. “Yes?”

Captain Harville, dandling the baby on his knee, gave a sudden crack of laugher. “Oh yes, Benny, why not show Miss Elliot some of your own poetry?”

“You compose?” Anne asked.

“ _ No! _ ” exclaimed Captain Benwick, slamming shut his book. “No, I— no! I do not. Not at all. It—”

Captain Harville was red with laughter; Captain Wentworth, red with annoyance and embarrassment, exclaimed, “For God’s sake, Harville _. _ ”

“There’s no reason for you two to tease poor Captain Benwick so,” Mrs. Harville scolded them. “I am sure Miss Elliot would like his poems.”

“She would not,” said Captain Wentworth flatly.

Mrs. Harville turned to Anne. “Those two have just embarrassed our poor Benwick into not wishing to show his poetry, but I say they are only jealous, for they cannot write a sonnet as he does. Fanny used to show me the poems he sent her, and very pretty they were too. I would rather have a plain letter telling me of all Harville’s engagements and the state of his health, so I admit I could not appreciate them as she did, but you are very refined, Miss Elliot, I am sure you will.”

“Oh, those poems,” said Captain Benwick, plainly very much relieved. “Yes, well. I will have to locate them. But, for now, for Miss Musgrove….” He jumped up and seized a well-thumbed volume from his shelves. “Perhaps you ought to read her Shakespeare’s sonnets?”  

These answered to the purpose well, for Louisa had some familiarity with the sonnets from school exercises and from phrases that had crept into the general lexicon and was delighted at her ability to follow them. Indeed, she even asked questions, to prove that she did understand them, which gladdened Anne’s heart. 

However, Anne could not shake the impression she had missed a joke among the officers. When Captains Wentworth and Benwick had returned to the inn, and Captain Harville gone upstairs to put the children to bed that evening, she asked Mrs. Harville about it. 

“It is a running joke among the three of them. Captain Benwick used to write love poems on commission for any clerk or officer who wanted one to send to his sweetheart. Captain Wentworth used to like joking that Captain Benwick’s fortune would soon exceed his, for there were a finite number of French vessels to capture, but an infinite number of pretty ladies.”

“I cannot see how that could so embarrass Captain Benwick  _ and  _ Captain Wentworth.”

“Ah well— I really do not know if you have read such a book, for you are so very fine a lady—”

“Not so very fine,” said Anne, a little startled, though it was hard to feel the argument had any weight when she sat there in silk and Mrs. Harville in printed muslin already a little faded. “Not uselessly so, I should hope.”

This reassured Mrs. Harville. “No, of course not. When your monthlies began, did your mother give you  _ Aristotle’s Masterpiece _ ?”

“Yes, though I haven’t looked at it in years.” Eight years, in fact, at a time when she had been certain she would be married, and that the knowledge within  _ Aristotle's Masterpiece  _ might finally be of practical rather than theoretical use to her. 

“Do you recall the passage where the bridegroom is told to recite a sonnet before engaging with his wife?”

Anne flushed, involuntarily recalling the first time she had kissed Captain Wentworth. He had surprised her as she was reading in the garden, taken her offered book of poetry, and read part of it out loud to her. Their heads had been bent together over the page; it had seemed the most natural thing in the world to turn to face each other and kiss. “A little, but I did not think it something commonly done.” 

“Those are the genre of poems Captain Benwick wrote on commission. If genre is the word I want.” 

“It is.” Anne was glad that Captain Wentworth had intervened. She was embarrassed to learn of the existence of such poems now, and would have been mortified to hear such content in mixed company.

But mortified or not, unquiet dreams stole her rest that evening. Anne had been touched so rarely in her life that it was impossible to forget that far too sweet, too fleeting a time, when Captain Wentworth had kissed her, and held her, and given her all the tactile proofs of love she had most desperately longed to receive. She had found it better to refuse to think of it at all, than to remember it and know she would never have it again. And that evening proved how right she had been to forbid herself from thinking of all the stolen moments where desire had inflamed her past all considerations of modesty. Anne hardly slept for the memories. When she did, her imagination so embroidered these, so twisted and rearranged and embellished that she woke, confused and wanting and achingly aware that this want would never be satisfied.

Fortunately, it rained heavily the next morning, keeping Captains Wentworth and Benwick at the inn most of the day. When they did arrive, just before dinner, Anne took care to hide upstairs reading the less mystical of the  _ Lyrical Ballads  _ until the moment one of the maids summoned her to table. She was glad to see Charles Musgrove had returned to Lyme, and was gladder still to hear he had brought all the requested trunks, and several overflowing panniers from the Musgrove pantry, which provided welcome subjects for conversation.

The Harvilles received the hampers with surprise, Mrs. Harville confiding to Anne, “Mrs. Musgrove has not, I think, much experience with nursing— for what patient needs Spanish olives when recovering?” Louisa could not partake of any of the contents, still confined to a diet of toast and water, but the rest of them could, and Charles Musgrove confessed to Anne, when sitting away from the rest of the company after an excellent dinner, that he had had the Harvilles rather than his sister in mind when raiding his parents’ larder. “For I cannot think that they are very well off, and yet they opened their home to us and have made no complaint at all about having both you and Louisa with them.”

“They have been everything kind and generous. Mrs. Harville, particularly.”

“Yes, I do not think I can ever thank her enough for nursing Louisa— and you too, Anne—” added a little belatedly. “Captain Harville is a capital fellow. It is too bad he has such problems with that leg of his; he was telling me at table of all the exotic birds he has shot and I should very much enjoy seeing him at work on some of the grouse hereabouts.They have been treating you well?”

“As if I was one of their own,” Anne said. She had said it quietly, feeling it too much to be very audible. 

Charles took this as proof of tiredness rather than strong emotion. “Poor Anne. Mrs. Harville told me that Louisa has yet to sleep the night through, and so you have not either. My mother and father mean to come to Lyme tomorrow— or no, tomorrow is Sunday. They mean to come the day after, and bring up our nursery-maid. You can stay with us in the inn, then, and have an unbroken night’s rest.”

Anne expressed her willingness to remain with Louisa, but was very glad at this offer of assistance. She did not feel it right to ask Mrs. Harville, or Mrs. Harville’s nursery-maid to ruin their sleep. “I hope they are coming soon? I admit to being somewhat surprised they have not yet come to Lyme. Did Mr. Hayter tell them, perhaps, that Louisa could receive no visitors during the first week of treatment?”

Charles stuffed his hands under his armpits, looking churlish. “No, no, it is Mary. Each time any of us talks of leaving, she goes into hysterics. Half the time that sets off Henrietta, and then the day is gone. My father and I take out the guns every morning just so we can discuss how best to get to Lyme. I left them believing that they would follow in a day or two, but we shall see. Mary makes all impossible. She cannot be left alone, and she cannot be brought here. Lady Russell was obliged to sit her down the day I left to come back. I hope Lady Russell might persuade her that Louisa is the chief sufferer here, not Mary.”

Anne nodded, and, the next morning, found that Mary had made something else impossible— Anne’s ability to clothe herself suitably. Mary had decided to be helpful by packing Anne’s trunk, and, in doing so, had completely neglected to send on all the things Anne actually needed, except for fresh shifts, stockings, and petticoats. Mary had sent on all the clothes that Anne wore at Kellynch when her father had a house party — including all her white muslin day gowns with elaborate white work or overlays of lace. Anne did not find any of the books she had requested either, but did find a note from Mary wondering why Anne wished to look such a dowd when she was the daughter of  _ Sir Walter Elliot _ , and why Anne did not bother to wear anything nice while at Mary’s. Was her cottage not  _ good  _ enough for Anne to dress appropriately? 

Anne sighed. It was no slight to Mary, but rather protection from the cutting comments her father made when Anne was not, in his opinion, dressing as befit an Elliot of Kellynch Hall. Anne had been preserving her best day gowns, in their current, pristine state, for Bath. 

Louisa, watching Anne unpack, remarked, “Mary has sent on some really very lovely gowns—which will you wear to church?”

It was the first time Louisa seemed to have anything of her old enthusiasm, and Anne had been wearing the same printed cambric round gown, same slate-gray pelisse, and same pale blue dinner gown with an embroidered border every day now for five days. All three badly wanted washing. White muslin it was. “Well, as we are going to church, I suppose I ought to be a little more fine than I am the rest of the week. Will you help me pick a gown, Louisa?”

Louisa happily agreed to it, and Anne brought Louisa each gown to inspect. Words sometimes escaped Louisa, but it pleased her to be doing something, and to be looking at something other than the walls of Captain Benwick’s room. She eventually concluded, “I think you should wear the white worked muslin, that chemisette with the lace ruff, and the coral sash, and the….” She searched for the word, twisting her fingers in the bedsheets in frustration. 

“Be patient, and the words will come.”

Louisa squeezed her eyes shut. “The… ear-drops! Wear your coral ear-drops. Coral suits you, Anne; you should wear more of it.”

Anne descended to breakfast, feeling conspicuously fine. Only Captain Wentworth was in the dining room, looking out the window and smiling at something; he turned upon hearing the door and stared at her. He looked impossibly handsome in his dress uniform, his upright and manly figure gilded in the morning light.

Anne curtsied, reminding herself that nearly a third part of her own life had passed since the memories that had so haunted her the past two nights. All ardor and agitations should have faded by now. She managed to say calmly, albeit very quietly, “Good morning, Captain Wentworth.”

“Miss Elliot.” He took in her gown with a smile of… was it admiration? “You always used to prefer white muslin. I had supposed your tastes had altered.”

Anne said, startled, “No, it is only that whenever I am at Uppercross, I am taking care of Mary’s children. My white muslins cannot withstand their ability to always find a mud puddle to run through.”

“What a high compliment to the Harville children, then, that you wear your white muslins around them.”

This won a smile out of her. “I suppose it is.”

“That style of dress suits you— has always suited you,” Captain Wentworth said— or at least Anne thought she had heard him say it, but she was not sure, for then the Harvilles came in then, followed by Captain Benwick and Charles; they had been out of doors, arguing whether or not there would be a storm that day. Captain Benwick paused mid-argument, seeing Anne, and crimsoned. Anne was amazed and amused by this, and recalled, as if it has been a lifetime ago, the stranger who had stared at her upon the stairs. Perhaps the sea-air  _ had  _ done her good.

Mrs. Harville exclaimed, “Why, you look very fine, Miss Elliot! That  _ is _ a pretty gown. Are you feeling more the thing?”

In truth, a week without an uninterrupted night’s sleep had worn on her considerably and she was now at the stage of low spirits and general malaise that meant she had overexerted herself. This state of being often presaged a cold, but Anne did not like to admit to this. “Yes, thank you. I am feeling very well—indeed, I should like to go back to the Blue Lias cliffs today after church, if you think it will not storm.”

The rest of breakfast was devoted to this topic, with all the men defending their differing, unscientific but guaranteed methods for correctly predicting the weather. 

Anne preferred to trust in Mrs. Harville’s method of looking at the barometer mounted to the wall, and asking the local servants as to the usual state of the weather at this time of year. “This near winter, there can be very sudden storms off the sea, so do not linger there too long,” advised Mrs. Harville. “But if you are back before noon, I think you will only have the wind to trouble you. And if you layer on your petticoats sufficiently, you shall hardly feel it.”

Anne went up to do so, and, upon Louisa’s recommendation, added to this ensemble a pelisse of rose-colored gabardine, a bonnet trimmed with ribbons in the same shade, and a shawl. The wind was a little unpleasant, but not unmanageable, and she felt warm enough as she walked to church. She did need to lean a little on Charles’s arm when walking into the wind, which concerned her when they left the church. 

Captain Wentworth came over to her. “Are you looking to the cliffs, Miss Elliot?”

She blushed at being caught out, and moreso at his nearness. Willing herself to forget how it had felt to be in his arms had been much easier when he was not physically present. This close, it was impossible to keep memories of his embrace from flashing into her mind, disrupting all other thoughts. “Yes. Miss Anning said that the rain causes the shale to fall sometimes. I was wondering if our sea monster had been freed, but I am not sure if I am equal to the wind.” 

Captain Wentworth held out his arm to her. “I think you are, if you have an anchor to keep from being blown out of your moorings.” 

Anne tentatively tucked her fingers into the crook of Captain Wentworth’s arm. She had not yet got over the tremors that afflicted her each time they touched; she fancied she never would, since there would never be an opportunity of their touching ever becoming commonplace. 

Captain Wentworth called out to Harville that they were going to the cliffs, and they walked at first in silence through the town. Anne tried a commonplace or two, but they fizzled out, and she was too weary, and too aware of him to fan them into conversational flame. They both grew a little easier when they had left the town and were approaching the cliff from the beach. Ten minutes of walking then felt like two, for they had the fossil and the sea to speak of— and there was more of the fossil than before. 

“Oh!” exclaimed Anne, clutching Captain Wentworth’s arm involuntarily. She  _ had _ seen a hand, or at least, the five strands of vertaberries all met at one end. And by it, there were a series of long, thin spines, like the bones of a fish, connected to what Anne was sure was a spine. “There is more of it— I think there is more of it. I suppose we ought not to get too near—”

“Not when it has rained so recently,” Captain Wentworth agreed, smiling down at her wryly. “One concussed woman on my conscience is quite enough. But I think you are right. Those look like ribs and a spine, to my eye. If the weather’s fair tomorrow, we can see if we can free it. Today, we had better walk closer to the sea.”

Anne looked about her, too pleased to remember her earlier fatigue and malaise. The lacework of white sea foam over the rocks was an enchanting sight. “I do not mind walking closer to the sea. I love to look at it.” 

Captain Wentworth tucked her hand more securely against his side as the wind picked up. “You say so now, but you wouldn’t after several months  _ at _ sea.”

“I cannot think I would grow tired of looking at it that quickly. Familiarity never breeds contempt in me. I have very rarely left Somersetshire and still love to look about the county. There is always some change to observe. And the sea changes so much, there must always be something new to look at.” 

“It does, at that….” Captain Wentworth trailed off and looked up, over the sea, shading his eyes with his free hand. 

Anne followed the line of his gaze. The little white clouds all seemed to scuttle away, chased by a huge gray column. The waves had began to crash more determinedly against the beach, too, in great white plumes of spray. 

“I think we had better return, Miss Elliot.”

Almost as soon as they turned around, Anne fighting against the wind to keep her skirts down and her bonnet on her head, they heard an odd crack from the cliff face. 

“It seems our dragon is trying to return to the sea,” said Captain Wentworth, as shale began to crumble. “Let us keep to the shallows, Miss Elliot.” 

“Perhaps we had better go back through the town, as well?”

“Yes, you’re quite right. It would be dangerous to remain anywhere on the beach with a storm coming.”

And as if to prove this, the sea suddenly pushed past its usual borders, rushing past Anne’s knees, drenching the hem of her gown and petticoats, and flooding her half-boots with water. “Oh, it is  _ cold _ !” 

Captain Wentworth was immune to this, in his boots and good wool greatcoat, and laughed a little, before helping her to regain her balance. “Have you never been sea-bathing, Miss Elliot?”

“Never! I had not expected it to be quite so cold.” 

It was slow going, stumbling through the shallows like this, and before they were even near the path leading back to town, the storm had crashed over them. Anne, battered by sea and sky, was drenched within half-a-minute. Her clothes afforded next to no protection against the rain, or against the wind, which seemed determined to snatch away her shawl and bonnet. There was now something strange and eerie about the beach and the cliffs, hidden in the thick veil of rain and sea spray, that made her think of  _ The Rime of the Ancient Mariner _ . 

She mentally recited it to herself as she forced herself onwards, to take her mind off the seemingly impossible task before her. It was agonizingly hard to try and run on the mix of wet sand and soft shale on this part of the beach. She kept sliding and slipping and once was so knocked about by the waves she lost her grip on Captain Wentworth’s arm and fell to her hands and knees. He hauled her up and said something to her, the wind whipping his words away before they could reach her ears— not that she could hear anything other than the rain or the roaring of the sea. Anne made a little helpless gesture. He pointed up the beach towards the path back to the town. Anne nodded.

To her mixed gratitude and amazement, he put his right arm about her waist, while holding her left hand so that she might have something to push against. The sand sucked at her soaked boots and clung to her wet, encrusted skirts, trying to drag her down; and the sea gripped at her ankles, insistent on keeping her, but Captain Wentworth’s grip and will were both strong. He towed her very firmly and very decidedly back to shore. 

All her involuntary sea bathing, and the continual downpour had chilled her almost unbearably. She could not conceal her shivers, and felt almost grateful when her hands and feet went numb. It became difficult to ignore how much of a strain it was to keep going, and mentally reciting the poem distracted her not at all. Anne found herself reciting it aloud: “ _ And now the storm-blast came,/ and he was tyrannous and strong:/ He struck with his o'ertaking wings,/ And chased us south along. _ ”

“We aren’t headed south,” said Captain Wentworth, in some perplexity. “Are you all right, Anne?”

She had expected the wind to be too violent for him to hear her, and could give no real explanation. Saying ‘I am reciting Coleridge’ seemed stupid, for why on earth would she be reciting poetry at such a time? Captain Wentworth was very practically focused on getting them out of the storm— as she ought to be as well. Anne gave a vague, half-breathless agreement. 

“You cannot have hit your head when that undertow nearly got you.”

“No, no, I am fine, I assure you! A little chilled, but nothing to signify.”

Captain Wentworth looked as if he did not believe her, but they were now at least off the beach. The hills were steep, the rain pelted them like grapeshot, and she was miserable and thoroughly weary by the time they had reached the outskirts of Lyme. 

They paused for some reason. Anne did not particularly care why. She was glad of the rest, though almost as soon as she caught her breath, there was a booming thunderclap, and Captain Wentworth said, “The storm’s picking up. In here.”

‘Here’ turned out to be a one room cottage, the door of which had been blown open. It had the bare and picked over look of a lodging house used only in the summers, with a rough-hewn table, two chairs (one of which was broken), a bed with a ripped straw mattress by a fireplace, and a set of instruments to tend the fire.

“Should we be in here?” Anne asked, feeling stupid with cold. 

“We must not be out there,” said Captain Wentworth, wrestling the door shut. “This gale looks like it will continue for some time.”

Anne accepted this with weary resignation. 

He looked about the cottage. “Ah, there are matches at least.”

“There is no wood or tinder,” said Anne, glancing at the hearth. 

“I can supply it if you don’t mind a little noise.” Smashing the broken chair provided wood, and the straw in the mattress tinder; Captain Wentworth had a fire started before Anne had managed to hang her shawl on a clothes peg on the wall, and begin to untie the ribbons of her bonnet. Anne tried flexing her fingers but her hands were too numb for it to be easy to untie anything. 

Captain Wentworth had hung up his coat and hat on a peg, tossed his wet gloves on the table, and undone his soaked cravat by the time she finally managed to pull out the knot in the ribbon. “Miss Elliot, can you feel your hands at all?”

“Feeling is returning. The knot was soaked, so I— it was difficult to undo.”

“You do seem to have brought half the sea with you. Your gown looks….”

Transparent. Anne looked down at the exposed hem of her skirt, mortified. 

He tactfully said, “I really think it is more water than muslin at this point.”

“I— I am sure my pelisse and shawl took the worst of it. If I am out of those I shall be perfectly well.”

Captain Wentworth looked away, tossing his neckcloth over the back of the chair. “Miss Elliot, I know for someone of your modesty this is difficult to hear, but your gown is wet through. If you sit in it, you shall chill yourself yet further and you are already half-frozen.”

Anne stared at him. She could acknowledge the sense of his words, but every proper feeling rebelled. (And every improper feeling... quite immobilized her.) She watched in mortified silence as he moved back to the fire and threw a chair leg on it. 

“I will give you my coat, my greatcoat kept it dry—”

Anne confusedly and incoherently protested that she did not mind catching a cold. 

“I know, you would probably rather die than take off your gown,” said Captain Wentworth, poking vigorously at the fire, “but I assure you, Miss Elliot you will die of the cold, or a cold, or even pneumonia if you sit around in clothes so entirely drenched. I have seen many men die of such, and I could not bear—” He pressed his lips together.  

Anne’s throat felt tight with misery. She could not even tell what she wanted from Captain Wentworth in this situation; she only wished and wished  _ profoundly  _ that she was not in this situation at all. 

“Will you look away?” Anne asked, once she had gathered her courage. Her voice sounded small, almost pitiful to her own ears. 

“I shall stare at the fire, Miss Elliot. You need not worry. It’s nothing I haven’t seen—” He winced. “I beg your pardon. That was a stupid joke, entirely stupid. Forgive me. I must blame having been at sea; a rough jest is usually what these situations call for, among men. We have no ladies to make our manners nice.” 

Anne’s face felt hot, a disorienting combination given the coldness, almost unto numbness, in all her limbs. Towards the end of their engagement, she had denied him nothing he had asked. Captain Wentworth had not asked for anything irrevocable— nor did Anne think he ever could, or would— but he  _ had _ seen her in deshabille before. Indeed, he had caused it. 

She turned and tore at the buttons of her gloves with shaking hands. She could not grip them properly. A half-frustrated, half-tearful “Oh!” escaped her. 

“Is aught amiss, Miss Elliot?”

Anne felt helpless tears pricking at her eyes. She hated to be so useless. “No, it is nothing. The feeling in my fingers is not— it is returning slowly. I shall be able to take care of my gloves in a moment.” 

“I am turning—”

“I cannot get off my gloves,” Anne said, hating the edge of hysteria to her tone, “so there is really nothing at all to fear seeing.”

Captain Wentworth set down the poker by the sound of it. Anne was busy struggling with her gloves while trying not to cry; she could not look at him. 

“Miss Elliot, let me help you with your gloves,” he said, approaching her. “Once those are off, you’ll have no trouble.” 

Anne tremblingly held out her hands to him, with a soft, “I hate to be such a burden.”

“You, a burden?” cried Captain Wentworth, in surprise. “That is impossible.” He took her right hand and turned it over, so that he could get at the button at her inner wrist. Even through the soaked cotton his hand burned like a brand. “It always seems to me that the day after you form a new acquaintance, everyone in their circle talks of what good you have done them.” His fingers brushed against the inner skin of her wrist, leaving a trail of fire as he unbuttoned the glove; the damp cotton peeled away. “You are not a burden, Anne. That is nonsense. No one with a shred of sense could fail to see your worth.” Captain Wentworth undid the button on her left glove, and helped take it off almost with tenderness; at least, with a gentleness that made it difficult to catch her breath or to be calm. “I will not allow anyone to call  _ you  _ a burden, least of all yourself.”

He tossed her gloves onto the table next to his own. 

Grateful tears sprang to her eyes. Anne had not meant to expose herself thus, to show all the world how best to hurt her. She had merely been too worn-out to keep herself from saying what she felt. And Captain Wentworth, who had been so angry with her and who had good reasons to be angry with her— he had not struck at her, but had seen the wound and dressed it. Anne clasped her hands together and raised them to her face, partly to blow on them and bring back the feeling, and partly to hide her tears. 

She could feel his worried gaze upon her. “Will you let me help you? Your hands were like ice.”

Anne managed a tremulous ‘thank you, yes,’ and he undid the clasp at the waist of her pelisse, before sliding it off her shoulders and down her arms. It distressed Anne to discover that her pelisse had not protected her gown from the rain  _ at all _ . The bodice was as transparent as the hem. 

Captain Wentworth cleared his throat and stepped behind her. She felt the sash around her waist give. Anne pressed her clasped hands to her lips as she felt him work his way up her spine. She was agonizingly aware of each vertebrae as he undid the button above it, and shivered less from the cold and more from his touch, light as it was. Anne wondered if it was possible to shiver apart, and entertained a sudden, morbid fancy of her vertebrae being found on the Lyme beach by future fossil collectors. 

She felt his hand still at her shoulder blades, and then heard him mutter, “Where are the rest of the buttons? There’s fabric here, but—”

“At the front,” she tried to say, but it came out rather inaudible. 

“What?”

She forced herself to turn and face him, though she could not met his gaze. “There is a drawstring, here—”

Captain Wentworth reached for the tie at the hollow of her throat, reached for  _ her _ , and Anne closed her eyes against a thousand memories associated with the gesture, with a desire that she could not acknowledge, not here, not now that Captain Wentworth loved Louisa. But this was worse. She was even more aware of him when she could not see him. The creak of the floorboard as he leaned towards her, the sound of his breathing; the puff of it against her cheek; the radiating warmth of his body; the hot brush of his thumb against the chilled skin at the base of her throat when he pulled the string loose, and the sodden collar gaped open. 

Anne’s eyes fluttered open involuntarily; she could not breathe, too overpowered by sensation, by the knowledge of his nearness. Captain Wentworth’s hand stilled. His calloused fingers rested against the bare skin of her throat. His eyes met hers.

Could he feel how her pulse raced at his touch? At how her breath stilled in her throat for want of him? Anne stared up at him, fearful she had betrayed herself; Captain Wentworth looked down at her, his breathing uneven, his expression intent, before he abruptly pulled away.

The last time he had done this, they had been engaged. More than that— they had been taking advantage of the physical liberties engaged couples tended to explore, secure in the knowledge that they would soon be married. 

Anne could not forget it— and neither, it seemed, could he.

He stirred up the fire, with enough force sparks flew out of the hearth. “I, ah. The fire is, ah. It needed tending. I beg your pardon.”

Anne made a faint, breathless noise and forced her hands into motion. Feeling was returning to her fingers, in a thousand tiny pinpricks, and she was able to at least push her gown off and step out of it, and peel the chemisette from about her shoulders. She went to go hang these up herself and then picked at the ties of her topmost petticoats. Her quilted petticoat was drier than the others; she decided to keep it on rather than strip to her shift and stays, since she wished very much to take off her wet shoes and stockings and did not wish to go about entirely bare-legged. 

When she had finished taking off her shoes and stockings, she glanced up. Captain Wentworth, leaning an arm on the mantel, fussed very determinedly, and very pointedly with the fire. He seemed to sense her stillness, or at least, registered she was not moving about any longer, for he set down the poker and set to taking off his uniform coat. 

Captain Wentworth silently held it out in her direction, his eyes fixed on the fire, and Anne just as silently took it and wrapped herself up in it. 

It was still warm from the heat of his body; putting it on felt almost like an embrace. She huddled into it, shivering, and sat on the bed with her legs to her chest, and the coat wrapped about them. 

“Are you—”

“Yes.” 

She hated how she stuttered out the word; she had meant to ignore her shivering, and was annoyed with herself for not maintaining more control over her voice. 

Captain Wentworth turned to look at her. She could not help but notice how well the years had treated him; how much broader his shoulders had become, how much more tightly the white uniform trousers clung to his thighs. 

Anne colored and looked away. 

“You’re still shivering,” he said with concern. “And you’re flushed. And earlier—” He had come towards her almost without thinking, and said, almost vexed, “It is not enough— stand up a minute, I’ll get the bed closer to the fire for you.” 

Anne looked bewilderedly at the fire. She attempted to say, “I am only two feet away from it,” but had been shivering so much when speaking, she was hardly intelligible. 

Captain Wentworth ran a hand through his hair and made a noise of deep frustration. He abruptly snatched his overcoat from the peg, and sat down on the bed next to her, his back against one of the bedposts. 

“Sir?”

Captain Wentworth spread his arms. “Here.”

Her color deepened; she stared at him in mute incomprehension. His offer did not seem real to her. She could not make sense of what he was offering.

“If you sit against me and face the fire,” said Captain Wentworth, his voice a little rough, “you will have two sources of warmth.” As she continued to stare at him, he lowered his voice, “Anne— Miss Elliot, believe me, I understand what a mortification this all is for you; but I can think of no better way to keep you from shivering yourself to death.”

Anne knew this was a terrible idea, but she was so tired of struggling, and she could not deny how badly she wanted to be held by him once again. She hesitantly unfolded herself, and shifted so that she sat on his bent left leg, and leaned back against him. He was warm and solid, smelling of the sea and shaving soap, not quite the scent she recalled, but oddly fitting. 

Captain Wentworth drew the coat about them both, so that that were well covered, and wrapped his strong arms about her waist. Anne closed her eyes against the hundred tender memories and the thousand fantasies this sparked. 

“I shall not have two women ill on my account,” Captain Wentworth said.

Anne’s throat was too tight with sudden misery to make any response. 


	4. In Which There Is More Huddling

“I feel like such a useless fellow ashore,” Captain Wentworth continued on, perhaps thinking that by talking he might set Anne at ease. “At sea I can spot a gale hours in advance and come through it without so much as tearing a sail. But as soon as I am on land, I cannot save you from catching a chill.”

“You must not blame yourself. Mrs. Harville told me herself that storms come very suddenly this close to winter.” This came out soft but a little more intelligible than her previous attempts at protesting she did not need to be nearer the fire. Anne was pleased it had come out at all, given how tight her throat felt from unshed tears. 

Captain Wentworth let out a faint huff of disbelief. His breath ghosted against the shell of her ear. 

Anne shivered, and not from the cold.

Captain Wentworth instinctively drew her closer. 

Anne sank back against him, just as instinctively. She felt overwhelmed. She really had no notion of how she ought to comport herself. Captain Wentworth loved another. Given that, every proper feeling declared she must sit as stiff and straight-backed as possible, to try and gather about her what scraps of dignity and decorum remained to her. 

Every improper feeling cried out for her to turn fully into his embrace, to put her arms about his neck, to kiss him as she used to do, before he was engaged formally to Louisa, and completely lost to her. 

It pained her to admit, even in the privacy of her own head, how much she hungered for his touch. It was impossible to be composed. She hardly knew what to do with her hands. Clutching shut the uniform coat did not feel safe. Anne was too aware that if she moved her hand, even a little, she would touch his arms as they curved about her waist. 

Captain Wentworth shifted, freeing his left arm. Anne tried to rise, but Captain Wentworth tightened his grip around her waist with his right arm. “Just moving my leg, that is all.”

He straightened his bent left leg, which Anne had been sitting on, so that she slid onto the mattress. Now she sat between his legs, her back pressed against his chest. He put his left arm around her waist again. Each of his hands came to rest on Anne’s opposite hip— his left on her right hip, his right on her left. Anne seized the place where his arms crossed over each other, to stabilize herself. The linen of his shirtsleeve felt well-worn, and soft against her fingertips. The movement had come to her as if eight years had not passed at all; as if they sat in this fashion every time they got a chance to be alone. 

“I really had meant to set you at ease, not demand you absolve me from blame,” said Captain Wentworth, his voice soft, and almost weary.

Anne felt herself involuntarily closing her eyes— this time to savor the sensation of being held by him so intimately, his voice low in her ear, his warmth surrounding her, his cheek nearly against her temple. ‘How easy it would be,’ thought Anne, ‘to lose myself in this, and in him.’ It felt as if eight years had been washed away in the storm.

She recalled how often they had sat thus, when first learning to love each other: Captain Wentworth against a tree, with his arms about her, Anne beside him, or in his lap, a book of poetry often in her own lap. Anne could not forget what sensations thrilled through her when Captain Wentworth gave voice to verses that had existed, until then, only in the stillness of her unshared thoughts. He had given such breath and life to them; given  _ her  _ such breath and life—

“I know you are unhappy with these circumstances,” said Captain Wentworth. “Miss Elliot, truly tell me what I can do to bring you some relief and it will be done.”

“I— why— will you… will you talk to me?” She had asked more to give him relief than to give herself any. Anne knew that Captain Wentworth did not like to be idle in the face of distress, but knew also that to have him talk to her like this, while she was leaning against him and his arms were so wonderfully warm and tight about her waist, would only discompose her further. “Tell me what a storm at sea is like?” 

Captain Wentworth settled himself around her, more comfortable now that he had something to do. He began on an anecdote about the first time he had sailed through a hurricane at sea as a midshipman. Anne had heard it before. She could not recall when. Then, when lulled half-asleep against his shoulder, she remembered. Captain Wentworth had told her this story the last time he had held her like this. 

There could not be a greater contrast between this moment and that day, one of the last of the halcyon days of their engagement. Every day of that enchanted summer had been filled with a warmth and beauty echoed by the mildness and sunniness of the weather. The air had always seemed laden with the scent of the flowers in the hidden corners of the Kellynch gardens, or the wildflowers in the more deserted meadows about the neighborhood. She had been pretty then, and her spirits higher than they had ever been before. 

And he— oh, he had loved her then. 

Anne could no longer recall why Captain Wentworth had told her the story that day, but she remembered she had been watching the lazy perambulations of bees and the butterflies, who seemed as drunk on nectar and sunshine as Anne had felt drunk on love. The bloom-filled scene had seemed such a contrast not merely to his story, but to how she usually felt when sitting in this part of the gardens. She had been used to come to this sheltered, unvisited part of the grounds when her family had upset her to the point of tears. 

She recalled Captain Wentworth’s saying to her then, “You cannot know what it is like to find safe harbor, after such a tempest.” 

Anne had looked up at him, secure within the circle of his arms. “I do.”

He had understood her, and kissed her with such passion that Anne now blushed to recall it. There had seemed to be nothing separating their hearts, and so in their youthful ardor, it seemed fitting that very little should separate their bodies either. They had already been sitting on Anne’s shawl, and Frederick had abandoned coat and cravat in the heat. What did his waistcoat matter? Or her fichu? And if the bodice of her gown ended up bunched about her waist, and her skirt and petticoats likewise— well, she was on her shawl, so her white muslin could not be stained, and they were to be married as soon as Sir Walter had returned home from a house party, and Frederick could ask for his permission. 

Memories dangerous to recall, given their current proximity, flooded Anne’s mind: how reverently Frederick had touched her then, his stunned expression when he had loosened her stays and pulled them down, the tender sweetness of his kisses, the welcome heaviness of him atop her—

Anne turned her head, so that she faced away from Captain Wentworth. Her face burned. 

He paused. 

“I am listening,” said Anne, very softly. “I am sorry— I am very tired. That is all.”

“Rest if you can. I shall tell you about something very dull that will send you immediately to sleep.”

Though she privately thought she could never be inattentive when Captain Wentworth said anything, the story was as dull as promised. Anne drifted off in the middle of his explanation of how to fill out naval requisition forms for dry goods. 

She surfaced from sleep only when Captain Wentworth shifted, some time later. He slid out from her, taking care to lay her gently upon the mattress. The bed creaked as he rose. Anne thought about opening her eyes but it hardly seemed worth the effort. She dimly heard footsteps, the creak of a door, a crescendo of rain. The cold cold air blew in, and Anne and screwed her eyes shut, burying herself deeper in the warm cocoon of Captain Wentworth’s coat and overcoat. The click of the door, Captain Wentworth muttering to himself, “Oh well done, Freddy. As soon as you make the place warm, you let in the cold air. Brilliant work.” Footsteps again, the dull clatter of wood being thrown against wood, the dim metallic thud of a poker striking crumbling wood. A welcome flare of heat: Captain Wentworth was stirring up the fire. Then, when Anne had begun to drift off again, she felt a gentle hand under her bent knees, and another sliding about her waist to press flat against her lower back. Sleep addled her wits; she had hardly realized this was Captain Wentworth before he was already, tenderly moving her, so that she could curl up in his lap, and he could cradle her against his chest. Anne automatically tensed in confusion, causing the uniform coat to fall from her shoulders.  

“Shh.” Captain Wentworth smoothed the taut line of her spine, his hand warm through the thin linen of her chemise, and even the thicker cotton twill of her stays. His voice had a softness to it that seemed out of the past when he whispered, “It is only a dream.”

Anne thought, ‘this is a dream like last night’s,’ and felt herself relaxing back into sleep. She was dreaming of being cradled to Captain Wentworth’s chest, resting her cheek against Captain Wentworth’s shoulder, and holding the open collar of his shirt, because that was what she  _ wanted  _ to happen, not because it was actually happening. She had been dreaming of his hand gliding gently up her back because she had been so overwhelmed by the way he’d had to help her with her buttons, earlier. 

It was a tamer dream than the evening previous, and Anne felt briefly grateful that she would not accidentally betray herself. And for all that it was tame, it was so very lovely. Captain Wentworth continued to run his hand lightly up and down her back, his fingertips tracing the line of her spine. Anne felt herself untensing at each stroke of his fingers. It seemed almost as if he were reconnecting each vertebrae, making her once again a whole and living creature, not merely a loose assemblage of numbed and disconnected parts.

She decided she might as well take advantage of this dream, now that she was aware it was one. Anne had been gripping the fabric of Captain Wentworth’s shirt and now snuck her hand through the open collar. She flattened her palm over his heart, fancying she could feel it beating. If her dreams followed the pattern established the past two nights, Captain Wentworth would now say something about still loving her, before falling upon her with the same passion as when they had been engaged. 

Captain Wentworth pulled her against him more tightly, with an “Oh, Anne,” so loving it had to be a memory, promoted by her exhausted mind to a fantasy. “How could I think it possible to forget you? How could I have convinced myself I had?” 

Anne felt a great contentment wash over her. She would, of course, feel wretched when she woke, when she saw the real Captain Wentworth and know she could never be more than an acquaintance to him. But now she wallowed in the indulgence of her imagination. She almost felt his kiss on her forehead. A faint rustle of fabric, then heaviness and warmth about her shoulders, then— a sense of dimming awareness, an increase in exhaustion, as she fell into a deeper sleep. Her mind skittered away before the best, worst, and most improper part of the usual dream. 

Anne woke with a sneeze, some time later. Her eyes flew open; she saw straw poking out of the mattress on which she was lying. 

“God bless you.” 

Anne sat up, the greatcoat sliding down to her lap. 

Relief and disappointment warred within her breast. Captain Wentworth was by the door, one hand on the frame, the other held out, to test the drizzle coming down. Anne sighed. It was terribly embarrassing to have dreamt of Captain Wentworth while he was in the room, but at least the dream had been sentimental rather than sensational. 

But this, of course, reminded her of the more fevered and salacious imaginings of her sleeping mind, and she was very flushed when Captain Wentworth came over to her, hand outstretched. “If you permit it?”

“Yes?”

Captain Wentworth pressed the back of his hand to her forehead. 

Anne suddenly recalled that her dream had featured Captain Wentworth kissing her forehead. She blushed all the more. 

“I think you are feverish, Miss Elliot.” 

“I am not feverish, I assure you.”

“Perhaps not yet, but do you feel perfectly well?”

Anne hugged his coat more tightly about her and reluctantly admitted to feeling rather chilled.  

“I am afraid you will catch a violent cold, if you have not caught it already.” Captain Wentworth went to the clothes pegs. “The rain has fallen to a drizzle; if we leave now, we can probably make it to the Harvilles before the storm starts up again. The sooner we get you back to the Harvilles, and into dry clothes, the better.” 

“Would it be better to stay?”

“If there was more wood, possibly, but I think we must risk it.” He shook out the still transparent muslin of her gown. “Still damp, but at least you will not be dragging the sea with you any longer.” He occupied himself by beating the dried sand off of her topmost petticoats and gown. Anne watched him at it a little incredulously before seizing her stockings and unpleasantly damp shoes. It was a struggle to get back into them. She drooped over her boots as she laced them. For all that she had slept, she had very little energy. She did not think herself feverish, but she did feel herself at the stage of incipient illness where every small task was difficult and the very air seemed determined to attack her. 

Captain Wentworth glanced over his shoulder and then turned to face her with real concern. “You look rather done for the morning, Miss Elliot. Let me help you?”

Before Anne could protest, Captain Wentworth was by her side, her gown and petticoats draped over one arm, his other arm extended to her. “Miss Elliot, I beg you not to protest you are being a burden again. I will not hear it. I know you would assist me if the situation was reversed.”

He was acting out of the urgings of his warm and amiable heart; he would always alleviate the suffering of his fellow creatures wherever he could. It ought to have reassured her, but some ugly and irrational part of herself cried out, wishing he was being so kind to her not out of common decency, but out of renewed, or better yet, unaltered love. 

“I only need help with the buttons of my gown, I think,” said Anne. “If you will hand me that, I can step into it— thank you.” 

Then she hesitated, realizing that she would have to take off the coat. Well, as Captain Wentworth had poorly joked earlier, it wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before; indeed, she had just been recalling one of the times he had seen considerably more—

Flushed and flustered, Anne took off the coat and folded it neatly on the bed. Captain Wentworth held out each item of clothing with eyes gallantly averted. Anne dressed herself as quickly as she could, caring more for speed than neatness. Her chemisette was very cold about her throat, and the drawstring still damp. Anne did not bother to tie it. Her gown was still wet through. The folds of muslin clung together. It was an exhausting struggle to pull it back on, and her only reward was to feel unpleasantly clammy. 

“Might I have your assistance, Captain Wentworth?” Anne asked.

“Of course.” Captain Wentworth had to pull the damp fabric closed against her back, and hold it in place as he worked the buttons back into their holes. Anne recalled her dream. It made her distinctly melancholy, and made Captain Wentworth’s process seem agonizingly slow. He was clearly trying not to touch her more than necessary, but still, all her awareness seemed concentrated wherever he rested his hands. Even as he finished fastening the last button, Anne still felt the ghost of his touch at her shoulder blades. Captain Wentworth looped the sash about her waist and had knotted it before she could force herself to open her eyes and face reality. 

She reached for her pelisse, but again, Captain Wentworth’s gallantry defeated her efforts to be as little trouble as possible. He helped her put it on, and refastened the clasp. His ungloved hand lingered at her side, warm in contrast to the chilled metal of the clasp. 

“Thank you,” Anne managed.  

He pulled his hand away. “You’re very welcome.” 

Captain Wentworth hesitated when he went to pick up his coat, his hand hovering over the fabric. 

“I can manage the rest myself,” Anne protested. “I am very grateful to you, but do dress yourself. I really can manage my own gloves.”  

“To be sure,” he hastily replied.

Anne went to fetch her gloves off the table. Her gaze lingered on  _ his _ gloves, where they lay beside her own, before she resolutely put them out of her mind and finished dressing. 

After placing a coin on the mantle to pay for the chair they had burned, Captain Wentworth offered Anne his arm. She was grateful for it, for she was now really very tired. Anne could not help but lean against him. Captain Wentworth looked down at her often, but Anne’s bonnet brim, the continual drizzle, and the necessity of keeping her eyes on the street, to avoid slipping on wet cobblestones kept her from seeing how he looked at her. Though she could not be sure, she fancied Captain Wentworth was watching her for any signs of illness. 

As soon as they reached the Harvilles’ house, Mrs. Harville pulled open the door and exclaimed, “Captain Wentworth! Miss Elliot! I was so worried!”

Captain Wentworth said, “We got caught on the beach when the storm—“

“You’re both soaked through!” Mrs. Harville cried, already taking Anne’s soaked shawl. “If it took you this long to get back, I have no doubt you shall both have very bad colds. Harville— John!” 

There was some noise from the parlor, and little George ran out to see what was the matter, and to self-importantly tell his mother that father’s leg was paining him in all this damp and he could not easily rise.

“George, take Captain Wentworth’s coat and hat, and help him to warm up by the fire in the parlor. Tell your father to give him tea.” Mrs. Harville took hold of Anne and propelled her up the stairs.  “Miss Elliot, I shall take you up at once— we must get you into dry clothes.” 

Anne glanced back at Captain Wentworth, who watched her go with… was it worry? But they were upstairs in Mrs. Harville’s bedroom before Anne could decipher his glances, and Mrs. Harville was telling her to remove her wet things. She, Mrs. Harville, would fetch Anne a dry nightrail and dressing gown. 

Anne did her best, though she still needed assistance with the buttons of her gown. She lamented, not for the first time, that the habits of fashion her father required so curtailed one’s independence. 

Mrs. Harville bore away the damp clothes to the laundry, the maids being away on their Sunday afternoon holiday, after exclaiming, “You poor thing, soaked to the shift! I shall be very much astonished if you have not caught a bad chill. You shall nap before the fire on my sofa here and perhaps you can sleep off the worst of it.” 

Anne did not. She felt really ill when Mrs. Harville came up to dress for dinner, and also felt uselessly in the way: taking up Mrs. Harville’s time; causing the nursery-maid to lose her Sunday afternoon in nursing Louisa; making Louisa anxious with news of her ill health; and worrying Captain Wentworth and Captain Benwick, both of whom had asked after her. Anne lied that she was not hungry and if she could just sleep through dinner and the rest of the night, she would be better directly. If she could have but a little laudanum to aid in this endeavor, she would need nothing else. 

Mrs. Harville gave her some, and made both Anne and Louisa drink broth and eat dry toast before leaving them in Captain Benwick’s room for the evening. Anne was asleep almost instantly but so frequently woke herself and Louisa with coughing that neither of them were well-rested come the morning.

The noisy, early arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove ended any attempts of theirs to sleep late. Louisa had to pull her pillow over her head to muffle the sound. The lack of sleep had very plainly given Louisa had the head-ache once again, and all the noise was agonizing to her. 

Anne gave up trying to sleep, rang for the parlor maid to help her into one of her over-fine white muslin gowns, and made her way downstairs. 

Captain Wentworth was in the hall. To her surprise, he extended his hand to her when she reached the end of the bannister. Anne automatically took his hand; it was warmer than her own, his fingers familarily calloused from a life spent at sea. “Miss Elliot, are you well? Mrs. Harville said you had a violent cold.”

“Not violent,” said Anne, though she sounded ill even to her own ear. “I hope it will pass soon.”

Captain Wentworth did not release her hand, but drew her to him, and was looked down earnestly at her face. 

“You do not blame yourself?” Anne asked. “I could not bear it if you blamed yourself. It was my fault for wishing to go to the cliffs—“

“Your fault! I know you would not have gone if I had not offered to accompany you—“

Anne coughed into her free hand; she felt Captain Wentworth press the fingers of the hand he held in sympathy. The touch thrilled through her. “Clearly,” she said, a little unsteadily, “no one is at fault, unless we wish to blame the wind or the sea itself. Or perhaps our sea monster for trying to escape home.” 

“It is all the work of Poseidon,” he joked. “That blaggard.” In a move Anne well remembered, Captain Wentworth did not release her hand but instead deposited it in the crook of his arm. 

Anne flushed. 

Captain Wentworth seemed struck by this, and looked upon her with curiosity, but then Mrs. Harville cried out, “Captain Wentworth, I hear you making Miss Elliot stand in the drafty hall while you quiz her! Bring her in before the cold air gives her pneumonia.” 

The parlor was very crowded and Anne felt unequal to the noise of all the others. She flusteredly assured everyone who asked that it was only a trifling little cold, she would be better directly. She then accepted both a place next to Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove and, with a real joy in having been useful, their long paens of gratitude for her service to their daughter. 

Mrs. Musgrove told Anne, “But we have brought Sarah with us— our old nursery maid, you know— and now you can rest up. Oh! And Mr. Musgrove brought his dogs, for Charles thinks there are some grouse hereabouts.”

The eldest Harville boy perked up at this, for he loved dogs. He instantly cornered Charles and demanded to know the name and pedigree of all the dogs, their training, and their preferred prey. Charles sensed a fellow hunter, and eagerly entered into conversation with the boy. 

Meanwhile, Mr. Musgrove opined, “A good bowl of grouse broth will make you feel instantly better, Miss Anne. There is nothing better for a cold.”

Mrs. Musgrove said, “Do be sure to ask the captains to go with you, after you have secured lodgings. I am sure they would enjoy a spot of shooting.”

“You may depend upon it! And I shall go find lodgings as soon as I have seen Louisa.” To Anne he said, with the air of one hoping he has not got his information wrong, “I am told she may now see us without it injuring her health, now they have finished bleeding her.” 

“She has the head-ache this morning,” supplied Anne. 

Mrs. Harville interjected, “Miss Musgrove must not be overexcited; her head is still very sensitive. Perhaps you and Mrs. Musgrove should go up separately?” 

These visits were not very long and after Sarah had taken Anne’s usual place, Anne apologized for being the cause of Louisa’s current exhaustion. “I kept her up half the night with my cough. I have been thinking I ought to take a room at the inn, now that you are come, Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove, and there is Sarah to nurse Louisa at night.” 

The rest of the party were aghast at this suggestion and Anne was shocked to realize it was because they none of them wished to hear of Anne’s removing herself from the Harvilles. 

“But surely,” said Anne, baffled, “there is not room. I should not wish to be an imposition, and I am sure there are no other guests at the inn.”

“And be ill among strangers!” cried Mrs. Harville. “No, no, I will not hear of it. You shall stay in the children’s room, and I shall nurse you, and Louisa shall be nursed by  _ her  _ old nursery-maid, Sarah. Sarah will take your cot.”

“But the children—”

“We could put them with the maids in the attic,” suggested Captain Harville.

“Nonsense,” said Mr. Musgrove. “When I go to find lodgings, I shall make sure there is a nursery, and your children must come with us.”

“Will the dogs be there?” George asked, eagerly. 

The knowledge that there would not merely be dogs but also carriage horses meant that George had decided he would live in the stables if the Musgroves allowed it. 

Captain Harville ruffled his son’s hair. “Do you promise to mind Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove if you go?”

George eagerly assented and distracted his sister from piling jam on her toast by assuring the room at large that Emma would mind the Musgroves too, or at least, she would mind him and  _ he  _ would mind the Musgroves. 

Captain Harville reached across the table and scraped half the jam off Emma’s toast. “You have more jam than bread there, miss. Do you want to holiday with Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove?”

“And the dogs,” George pointed out, as this was the real attraction. 

Emma scowled. “I want jam.”

“We shall have jam  _ and  _ cake,” said Mrs. Musgrove. Then, to Captain Harville, “Though not at the same time, Lord bless me.” 

This satisfied Emma. 

Captain Wentworth, Captain Benwick, and Charles Musgrove, at the other end of the table, volunteered to help fetch and carry, or vet lodgings, or do whatever was necessary. Anne felt grateful that Captain Wentworth was talking of helping the children to ready themselves instead of justly condemning her for failing in her one duty of nursing Louisa. The kindness of the whole group was almost too much to bear. 

Mrs. Harville said to Anne, “We have all three of the children in one bed, since it is likely to get so cold this winter. We need only to change the sheets and beat the mattress a little and you will be very comfortable.” 

“Are you really very sure the children would not mind? And that you do not mind being separated from your children?” 

Mrs. Harville looked a little conscious. “They are quite wild to go, and… I hope you do not think I am a bad mother, but I would not mind having a night or two away from the baby. Little Beatrice is teething, and never sleeps through the night—”

“No, not at all!” cried Anne. “Mrs. Harville, I would never think so. I only feared that I might be distressing the children, or causing you trouble.” Anne felt tears prick at her eyes. “I am so sorry to inconvenience everyone—”

“I knew it,” said Mrs. Harville, playfully shaking a finger at her. “You have fallen ill on purpose. I should have known from the start you had a greater command over your humors than any other living creature, and could unbalance them at will.”

When phrased in such a fashion, her fears and her apology seemed rather silly. 

Anne submitted both to the general will, and to the general good-will of the party. She was not allowed to be of use, or to help pack or anything. She was to sit in the parlor and drink with tea and honey. She was positively forbidden to do anything else. Captain Benwick, who seemed really very anxious about her health, pulled down half-a-dozen volumes for her until Captain Wentworth called him away, and Anne was left to the private enjoyment of  _ The Giaour _ , and to her own sickness-addled thoughts. 

Predominant amongst her sluggish musings were gratitude for the kindness of every member of the party, and relief that Louisa’s care would not suffer because of Anne’s cold. That relief melted into another kind of relief, tinged with surprise, that someone cared enough to nurse  _ her  _ when she was ill. Anne admitted to herself the sincere and now deep wish that in Mrs. Harville she might find a friend, of the kind she had not had since boarding school. 

Anne could not keep off the melancholy reflection that they might have been friends for years already, if she had not—

No. It was useless to indulge in this. If she had learnt anything from her embarrassing dreams the past three days, it was that reflecting too much on the past made the present an impossibly mortifying ordeal. So Anne had not met Mrs. Harville eight years ago, and they had not been Navy wives together. Now they had a chance at real friendship, she would not squander it. Who knew when the chance might come again, especially after Louisa improved enough to marry Captain Wentworth?

There came a great noisy clatter in the hall, much hallooing and discussion among the men in tones too loud for Anne to understand. Anne was very grateful when Mrs. Harville came into the parlor.

“Send two naval captains to find lodgings in a sea-side town, and they have it done within the hour,” said Mrs. Harville.“The Musgroves are already unloading their carriage. We shall have the children’s things moved and the room tidied in no time at all and then you can rest.”

“So quickly,” marveled Anne.

Mrs. Harville sank onto the sofa beside Anne. “Time and tide, you know. When a thing is to be done, it is to be done quickly. They are never good at waiting. That they leave to those who remain ashore. But that is all to the good in this case; you can go up and rest within the hour, as soon as the maids have done.”

Anne thanked her, but Mrs. Harville seemed to sense Anne’s lack of enthusiasm for the idea.

“Although…” Mrs. Harville smiled suddenly. “I think you and I are of a similar cast of mind. It is agony to be idle. I have some mending to get on with. Perhaps you might sit up with me until you  _ are  _ ready to rest and we shall have a nice coze together.”

Anne said, really meaning it, “I should like that above all things.” 

  
  



	5. In Which Anne Makes a Friend

Mrs. Harville had a host of fascinating stories about her childhood in the Bahamas, and her adolescence and early adulthood on various frigates and ships-of-the-line. She was at first shy about sharing them, thinking that a fine lady such as Anne could have no interest in such tales, but she grew easier after Anne said, “I have traveled so little, every fresh place is of interest to me, and you speak of them so vividly.” Anne’s occasional coughing fits likewise convinced her that it was best to talk and let Anne listen. 

Anne went up to the nursery after perhaps an hour’s conversation. It was a cheerful room, crammed all with toys, and papered with Emma’s favorite monsters, and works from George’s long-running series, ‘Dogs My Cruel and Tyrannical Parents Would Not Allow Me to Own.’ (The baby had contributed the occasional grubby handprint.) Anne curled up in the armchair near the fire feeling a coziness tinged with melancholy. 

To have her own nursery struck Anne as so terribly unlikely. And yet— she had proved herself a good and loving aunt. And with the example of her own dear mother never far from her thoughts, Anne thought that she would not be a bad mother. Of course, to have a nursery one must first have a child, and to have a child one must first have a husband—

— and she still wanted no other husband but Frederick Wentworth. 

Anne leaned her cheek upon her hand and contemplated the fire. He would make such a magnificent father someday— attentive, kind, engaged— and Anne found herself crying a little as she contemplated Louisa’s good fortune. 

But this was useless. Had she not come to this realization two hours ago? Dwelling on what she could not have only made her overlook what she did have, or have a chance at having. Anne blew her nose, and attempted to sleep. 

A sense of obligation caused Anne to go down for dinner. She was a little startled to realize that as Mrs. Musgrove was there, the order of precedence for going into the dining room had shifted. Captain Harville led in Mrs. Musgrove, Mr. Musgrove led in Mrs. Harville, and Captain Wentworth led in Anne. 

“Miss Elliot,” Captain Wentworth said, looking anxiously at her as he held out his arm. “Are you feeling any better? You look….”

So altered he did not know her, most likely. Anne took his arm and stifled a sigh. This turned into a cough; she turned her head away and Captain Wentworth put his free hand over hers, where it rested in the crook of his elbow.

“Perhaps we had better call an apothecary for you?”

“Mrs. Harville is the only apothecary I need, I assure you.”

“But surely there must be something?”

“I always must wait out my colds,” said Anne. “If I may sleep it off, I think I shall be well within a week. They only linger if I cannot rest.”

Despite her saying this, Captain Wentworth was unusually attentive at dinner, making sure to offer her whatever plate was before him, and looking well-pleased whenever he hit on something that actually tempted Anne’s appetite. His solicitude (or his guilt, thought Anne) caused him also to say that though he had meant to return to Kellynch for a few days, he would put it off until she was better. He was too much the gentleman to mention his want of clothes, but given Anne’s own relief in having new things sent to her and the probable lack of laundrymaids at the inn, she fancied he was in need of new shirts at least. 

“I do not wish to cause any delay in your trip,” said Anne, “especially as your sister must be eager to hear from you. Please, I beg you will not keep off on my account.”

“Miss Elliot, I do believe that you are still suffering under the unfortunate delusion that you are a burden. You cannot ever be so to me.”

Anne was confused and flustered by this. “I am very sure I could be— but please, there is nothing you can do for me here. I need only rest to be well again. And I would rest much better knowing that I had not inconvenienced you.” 

Mrs. Musgrove interrupted, “Oh Miss Anne, did you hear? We have got a very nice pianoforte in our lodgings, so as soon as Louisa can stand, we can have a little impromptu ball to celebrate.”

“We must consult with the surgeon before that,” said Mrs. Harville, very gently. “I am not sure she should rattle her brain with even the jumps of a country dance.”

Captain Harville said, eagerly, “But Captain Wentworth says that Miss Elliot plays very well. Miss Elliot, perhaps you might play for us, when you are feeling better?”

“Oh yes, she is a capital player,” agreed Mr. Musgrove. “No one plays a dance better, or faster, and my girls brought home with them from school all these cotillions that gallop along.” 

“Lord bless me how those little fingers of her fly up and down the keys!” cried Mrs. Musgrove. “And she knows those long, complicated pieces, too, from all those German fellows.” 

“Careful, Mrs. Musgrove,” said Mrs. Harville, laughing. “Captain Harville is very fond of music, especially by all the contemporary German composers. And Captain Wentworth is too! They shall press-gang Miss Elliot to the pianoforte as soon as they can.” 

Anne felt almost incredulous that people wished to hear her play the Beethoven sonatas that usually brought pleasure only to herself.

“It would give me— give us all great pleasure to hear you again,” said Captain Wentworth.

Anne turned to look at him. He seemed in earnest. And he smiled at her— uncomplicatedly, sincerely, with a glow of gentleness that reminded her of the past. “Of course, then. Though I regret to say that I haven’t any music, and the only Beethoven sonata I know entirely by heart is the Moonlight sonata. I only know the first movement of the Pathetique.”

She loved to play the first movement, to test her skill with the cross-hand playing and all the dramatic shifts in dynamics, to lean into the haunting dissonances before the achingly quiet resolutions, to thunder out the last chords. But she stopped after the first movement whenever she played. The soft, sweet refrain of the second movement of Pathetique reminded her too much of Captain Wentworth to make it easy to get through. 

Captain Harville looked smugly at Captain Wentworth. 

“I suppose that settles my returning to Kellynch for a few days,” said Captain Wentworth. “I shall have to fetch your sheet music for you, lest we be haunted by the Moonlight sonata.”

“You dislike it only because it is popular,” said Captain Harville, and to Anne’s delight, she, Captain Harville, and Captain Wentworth talked of music all the rest of dinner. 

This did however, exhaust her and cause her to lose her voice; as soon as Captain Benwick had read the first poem of the evening (quite confusing all the Musgroves), Anne retired upstairs. She felt Captain Wentworth’s eyes on her as she went, and Anne was once again touched at his solicitude.

Anne put herself to bed thinking on Captain Wentworth’s kindness with a painful tenderness. It was difficult to remind herself this signified only friendship, and that she ought to be grateful for it. He was her friend once again. What good fortune, to consider him a friend when before they had been nothing to each other. But as Anne drifted off to sleep, the bitter and ugly part of her, the part that was only allowed to escape into the safe spaces of poetry and Beethoven sonatas, howled out in despair. Once she and Captain Wentworth had been everything to each other. Once, he had loved her. How could Anne ever be satisfied with anything less?

“Because I must,” Anne murmured into the pillow. She rose and took some drops of laudanum Mrs. Harville had left for her. Sleep came easily, after that. Indeed, she did not rise from her bed except to go down to dinner the next day. This exhausted her. Captain Wentworth’s absence was not the relief she thought it might be, and Anne was utterly inattentive to the conversation, too lost in wondering where he was; if he was still traveling, or if he was already dining with his sister and brother-in-law. Anne would have gone back up if she had only her own comfort to consult, but felt she ought to remain downstairs with the others, as Louisa finally felt well enough to join them. 

Anne and Mrs. Harville alike took great pains to make the Musgroves understand that Louisa was still unwell. The Musgroves did not entirely understand how. 

“It is very easy for her to get the head-ache,” said Mrs. Harville. “Loud noises and bright light will bring it on, or if she tries to read or sit to work. And did you not say sometimes the effort of conversing brings it on, Miss Elliot?”

Anne agreed to this, adding, “At times, she does not recall words and this frustrates her exceedingly. I would urge patience and quiet.”

Captain Harville wisely took the children (who had dined upstairs in their playroom), out of the parlor for a few minutes. The room would not be too crowded, or filled with the noise of George and Emma’s overlapping, unintelligible stories of their adventures with the Musgroves. 

Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove could not be patient or quiet. They were very feeling, affectionate parents, and the moment Sarah the nursery-maid led in Louisa, they fell on their daughter with glad cries, and loud tears. This startled and frightened Louisa considerably, and she ended up bursting into tears herself. Her parents thought her merely overwhelmed with emotion and bade her sit and have a little tea or perhaps some Madeira to settle her nerves, but neither of these helped very much, and their talking over each other, and to all the other members of the party agitated Louisa exceedingly. Louisa plainly did not know which way to turn, to try and follow conversations that sped by her, and she was only made easy when Mrs. Harville very calmly took charge and asked Captain Benwick to read to them all. 

“It is our habit in the evenings,” she said, pulling chairs nearer the fire, and putting Louisa in the one nearest to Captain Benwick. “Since the children are sleeping elsewhere, I hope you do not mind if we keep them to this routine.”

“Oh yes, it really is better for children if they have fixed times for everything,” agreed Mrs. Musgrove. “What shall you read to us, Captain Benwick?”

Captain Benwick looked a little overwhelmed. “Oh, ah…  _ Childe Harolde _ ?

“I have read that,” said Louisa, gratefully. “Everyone at school read it. The….”

Captain Benwick turned to her, with a gentle, encouraging look. 

Louisa twisted a fold of her skirt about her fingers. “The  _ teachers. _ I do not know why I could not think of the word. But they kept trying to keep us from reading it, because it was so popular, and Lord Byron was not a respectable man, but that made us all more determined to read it.”

Captain Benwick smiled, and took care to speak as Anne and Mrs. Harville had asked everyone to do: slowly and softly. “I admire your persistence, in pursuit of art. Did you enjoy it then?”

“Very much,” said Louisa. “Much more than the poems we were forced to memorize for lessons.”

“That is a good way to kill a love of poetry in anybody,” said Captain Benwick. “Poetry is, I think, best when it is discovered on one’s own rather than forced upon one. A poem learnt by heart must be learnt because it has formed a part  _ of  _ your heart; because the words have meaning to you, not to your teacher. Do you not agree, Miss Elliot?”

“Exactly so,” agreed Anne, thinking of the thousand extracts with which she had bandaged her own broken heart. 

Captain Harville had by this point returned with the children; they flopped onto the rug by the fire, very happy to be continuing with so exciting a poem as  _ Childe Harold.  _

Anne was really very tired and still feeling ill. She left as soon as she saw that Louisa was less agitated, and following along Captain Benwick’s reading. Anne spent most of the next few days asleep, only leaving her room to help Mrs. Harville with her morning mending.. It was a great luxury to rest, and to be encouraged to rest. Usually, she could only keep to her bed to sleep off any illness if her father and Elizabeth were in London. 

After everyone had breakfasted, Anne and Mrs. Harville had the parlor entirely to themselves, and Mrs. Harville did not mind if Anne quitted her task early to rest. No one bothered them; Mrs. Musgrove occupied herself with the children, at her lodgings down the street, Louisa rested upstairs, and the men went off shooting. 

Captain Wentworth was, of course, back at Kellynch. Anne tried not to dwell on this overmuch. 

The mornings with Mrs. Harville did more good for Anne than any physick. It was a profound relief to have another woman with whom she could share her thoughts and observations, one who seemed genuinely interested in them, and whose own thoughts and observations were so interesting. Mrs. Harville was perhaps unpolished, but she was a deeply good person, open-hearted, generous, with a frank character and a practical disposition. Anne liked her immensely, and by the time Captain Wentworth returned to Lyme that Friday, Anne was delighted to discover the feeling was mutual. Mrs. Harville had also been badly in want of female company. 

“I have missed having another woman about the house,” said Mrs. Harville. “Fanny and I— we used to sit and talk over our sewing for hours. And it used to be the same with my sister Beatrice, before she married.”

“Where is she now?”

Mrs. Harville lowered her voice conspiratorially. “She turned traitor and married an army officer!”

Anne smiled. “Did you ever forgive her for it?”

“Oh yes, for she quit her husband to help me through Emma’s birth. Harville was at that time ordered to the Americas, because the American merchants did not like our pressing their sailors. And with George being so young and myself expecting— it tore me in two, to decide to stay in England but I did not think I ought to risk going with him, when they were sailing directly into action.” Mrs. Harville worked the needle into the cloth with unexpected force. “It was a very hard choice to make; I had been used to going everywhere with first my father and then with Harville.” 

“It must have been a great relief for you, to have your sister then.”

“Oh yes! And that is why little Beatrice is named for my sister. You have sisters yourself, I think.”

“Yes, I am the second of three.” Anne hesitated then decided to confide, “We— we are not as close as you and your sister. Our mother’s death… divided us.”

Mrs. Harville nodded, her dark eyes full of understanding. “I have seen that happen, often enough.”

“I always longed to be friends with my sisters— that is, I have always tried. But we none of us share any interests and our views of the world do not align. Our mother’s death blew us all in such different directions. I cannot imagine sitting like this with my eldest sister. And my youngest….”

“Mrs. Charles Musgrove?”

“Yes.” Anne added, a little weakly, “I do love her, very dearly.”

Mrs. Harville laughed. “Yes and I love my brother— he is an army surgeon, thanks to Beatrice’s bad influence— but if we are more than a week together in the same house, we start quarreling like children.”

Anne laughed. “I find it difficult to picture your quarreling with anybody.”

“Then I must have you visit when my brother is in town!” 

The promise of a future visit filled Anne with delight, and she was smiling, and giggling over the story of one of Mrs. Harville’s stupider quarrels with her brother when the maid announced Captain Wentworth. 

Mrs. Harville rose. “Welcome back, Captain Wentworth!”

He was in civilian dress, which suited him just as much as his uniform, and smiled at them with a degree of warmth even greater than usual. “Mrs. Harville, Miss Elliot.”

“You are most welcome back to Lyme,” said Mrs. Harville, gesturing at Captain Benwick’s usual chair. (She and Anne were sharing the sofa, with the pile of mending between them.) “Will you sit with us? Captain Harville will be down presently; he went up to change his coat. Mr. Musgrove and Mr. Charles mean to take him shooting.”

Captain Wentworth took his seat. “Yes, Charles mentioned it, though I set out ahead of him.” 

“Are you staying with the Musgroves?” asked Anne.

Captain Wentworth smiled at her. “They would not hear of my doing anything else. They are very excellent people, the Musgroves.”

“Yes, and I imagine they would wish you close, at such a time,” agreed Mrs. Harville. 

Captain Wentworth looked a little confused at that, but, then again, he was searching his coat for something. “I have a letter for you, Miss Elliot, from Lady Russell.”

Anne could not hide her astonishment. “You… called upon Lady Russell?”

He looked conscious as he handed over the letter. “I did not have that pleasure, but while I was with the Admiral, Sophy called upon her, and offered my services as a messenger, since I was returning to Lyme. She and the Admiral send their best wishes for your recovery and beg to know if there is anything of yours at Kellynch that you might want sent on to you. My sister, Sophy Croft— did you ever meet her, Mrs. Harville?”

“Yes! I liked her very much indeed. She is in good health?”

“Aye, and still managing to keep her head intact despite all the tumbles she’s had. Her husband is learning to drive.”

“Apparently not with much success,” said Mrs. Harville. “I hope you did not take a tumble.”

“I confess I lack sufficient bravery to ride with them myself,” said Captain Wentworth, with a laugh. “But Sophy says she’s been knocked about so much worse by the French, she hardly notices when the Admiral overturns them into a ditch. It reminds her of old times.”

Anne and Mrs. Harville both laughed.

“Miss Elliot could probably speak to their driving better than I,” he continued.

Anne colored, thinking of how he had helped her into the carriage, not too long ago. She bent her head over her mending. “I only had the pleasure of riding with them the once, but it seemed to me that Mrs. Croft had worked out a very admirable system of managing the posts and stiles.”

“She has had time to understand the intransigence of posts,” quipped Captain Wentworth. Mrs. Harville snorted. Anne did not quite understand this joke.

“It is a pun on post captains,” said Mrs. Harville. “Proud devils, the lot of them.”

“You seem much better, Miss Elliot,” Captain Wentworth said, looking at her a little searchingly. “Your color has much improved.” 

“Thank you. I am feeling much better. I really only needed to rest.” 

“Miss Musgrove will be down soon,” said Mrs. Harville. “Captain Benwick does not enjoy shooting so he reads to us about this time. Miss Musgrove likes to come down for that; she finds it less overwhelming than after dinner.”

“I do not wish to set back her recovery by crowding the room,” said Captain Wentworth. “Mr. Musgrove invited me to be one of the shooting party. He assured me that there was very good sport, and all the pheasants they have bagged were the reason you were restored so soon to health, Miss Elliot.”

Anne smiled. “I am sure they contributed. Everyone has been much kinder than I deserve.”

Captain Wentworth looked as if he were about to argue this point, but then Harville came in exclaiming, “Wentworth! How are you?” and Anne excused herself upstairs to read her letter from Lady Russell, and to rest. 

The letter from Lady Russell was much more satisfactory than the one that she’d paid for earlier that morning, from her father. Sir Walter had written to say that the snake stone Anne had sent him was much finer than the one Sir Edward had, but Sir Edward had some “devil’s fingers.” Anne must try and secure some devil’s fingers and bring them with her to Bath. 

Anne did not know who Sir Edward was. She was a little saddened that her father should be interested in fossils not because his daughter was interested in them, or because they were fascinating in and of themselves, but as a way of cementing his superiority. She was not, however, surprised.

Lady Russell was interested in the fossils as she was in any natural science— not with consuming interest, but with the well-bred curiosity of the well-educated— and she was happy that Anne had a hobby. The letter ended with a rather stilted acknowledgement that Captain Wentworth would bear the note and for Anne not to be distressed .

‘I will come for you, in Lyme, whenever you wish me to,’ Lady Russell wrote. ‘You must not suffer unduly for the sake of helping Louisa Musgrove. I know your affectionate heart urges you to aid any fellow creature who claims to need you, but you must not let this ruin your health or your peace. I know, my dear, you will write and say you have got a cold because you were caught in a rainstorm, and that could not be helped, but your colds always linger because you will not rest, but instead attend upon your father or your sisters, or whatever bit of business about Kellynch you feel obliged to take on. If you are ill longer than a fortnight, I must insist on your writing to me. I will take you home with me.’

Tears filled Anne’s eyes. This was kindness indeed, and Anne was glad to think that if Louisa and Captain Wentworth did finalize their engagement, an easy escape was within her reach. Anne turned Lady Russell’s offer over in her mind and concluded that though she was endeavoring not to dwell on what might have been, she could not happily accept all the current circumstances of her life. It would be misery beyond what she could bear to be in so small a circle as this and have to celebrate Captain Wentworth’s engagement to another woman. 

Thankfully it began to rain just as Captain Harville returned from shooting with a brace of pheasants. Anne came out of her room to hear what all the noise downstairs was, and heard Captain Harville tell his wife, “Brr! The winter is setting in. I am glad I left the Musgroves when I did. I daresay they will all dine at their lodgings tonight; we really cannot ask them to brave this squall.”

“What a pity!” said Mrs. Harville. “I suppose it will just be us and Miss Elliot enjoying these fine birds, and Louisa, if she is feeling well enough for it.” 

Louisa was not, and Anne had all the joy of having the Harvilles to herself. She felt more welcomed and wanted by them than she ever had with her own family, and this— even more than being able to put off observing Louisa and Captain Wentworth’s eventual reconciliation— made the evening a lovely one. 

The weather continued stormy until Tuesday, when the Musgroves insisted on having everyone over for dinner. This was to mark Louisa’s first time dining out since her injury, but the variations in the barometer had given her a multi-day headache, rendering her unfit to do anything but lay in bed, or on a couch in the parlor, listening to someone read. She remained home.

Anne at first tried to do so as well, but Sarah the nursery-maid grew rather offended, thinking this a slight on her skill, and Anne capitulated. They were a lively, merry party, and Anne was still smiling when she found herself next to Captain Wentworth. He took the first opportunity of speaking with her to beg her to play after dinner. “I have brought your sheet music for you,” he said, “so there is no getting out of it.”

“If it would please you,” Anne said without thinking. 

Captain Wentworth laughed. “Miss Elliot, you say that as if you doubt it. You ought to doubt that— what’s the phrase, that the stars are fire, than doubt I could ever listen to you play without pleasure.” 

Anne did not know what to say to this, and Captain Wentworth, seeing her discomfort, changed the subject to Beethoven more generally, and they talked music almost to the exclusion of the rest of the table. Captain Wentworth seemed really very animated, quite obviously enjoying their talk, and was dogged in his attempts to persuade Anne to declare him the best composer for the piano. Anne admitted no other composer seemed to so understand the range of the pianoforte.

“All these other fellows got their start on the harpsichord,” said Captain Wentworth, shaking his head. “No sense of the dynamic  _ possibilities  _ of the pianoforte. No one thunders quite like Beethoven.”

“It’s because the man went deaf, Wentworth,” said Captain Harville, turning laughingly from his conversation with Charles. “Mozart is the best composer for any instrument, and you will never convince me out of it. There’s true genius. What say you, Miss Elliot?”

Anne confessed that she could not make such a judgement call. Her seclusion meant that she had never heard Beethoven performed unless she was the one performing. She had loved the Mozart symphonies and concertos she had heard while at school at Bath, and still recalled the joy these performances had sparked in her— the first happiness she had felt after the death of her mother. Mozart would ever be dear to her for that. Beethoven’s music to her was a more private consolation. She struggled to express this, in ways intelligible to the rest of the company, and was instead prevailed upon to play a Mozart sonata as well. 

When Anne discovered that the rest of the party was not opposed to this, she acquiesced. To have a whole half-hour of playing before an audience that actually wished to hear her was an unaccustomed luxury, and one that she could not deny herself.

The pianoforte in the Musgroves’ lodging was not bad. It was nothing to the one at Kellynch, but it seemed well-loved and well-used, and when Anne attempted some scales, none of the keys stuck, or sounded out of tune. Even testing the keys pleased her. She had gone from playing nearly every day for years, to not playing for weeks, and though her fingers felt at first stiff and graceless, the scales and arpeggios warmed them; feeling returned. Captain Wentworth’s nearness caused more wrong notes than anything else. He had seated himself beside her as soon Captain Benwick offered, “Shall I turn pages for Miss Elliot? I have no strong feelings about either composer, and may be a little more impartial.”

“Benwick, you are a very great reader, but not of music,” said Captain Wentworth. “Poor Miss Elliot will have to draw out her passages for minutes at a time until you realize you must turn the page. Harville, my word as a gentleman I shall not purposefully make the Mozart sound inferior to the Beethoven.”

Captain Harville, busy with his children, agreed to this distractedly. 

Anne decided to play Mozart’s second sonata, for the practical reason that Captain Wentworth had brought the sheet music of it from Kellynch. She tried to recall if she had ever played this for him. It seemed likely, for it carried a great deal of meaning for her; she always played it when she was happy. 

But because she had not looked at the piece in years, Anne could not play the sixteenth notes wandering up and down the keyboard with her accustomed rapidity. She did not feel mistress of herself or of the sonata. Anne closed her eyes, willing herself to recall what the sonata felt like before, the joy sparking from her fingertips each time she hit the keys, the way the music would run up and down the keyboard as she had used to run about the gardens with her mother and sisters as a child. The feeling of the sonata returned to her— albeit awkwardly, and she could not lose herself in the physicality of playing with Captain Wentworth beside her. Every time she had to open her eyes to remind herself of the correct chords or the next musical phrase, she could not help but see him.

He was in uniform—he always dined in uniform—and the gold braid of his epaulettes kept catching the light. Anne’s eye was unwittingly and unwillingly drawn to him. Each time he leaned forward to turn the page, his sleeve brushed Anne’s shoulder. And she could almost feel his gaze upon her. When she was halfway through the second movement, she became convinced Captain Wentworth looked away from her only to look at the sheet music.

Anne knew his love of music, and knew now that when she first pushed away a desire, it attacked her with renewed force until she could subdue it. Because he appreciated her playing, Anne wished to read into it an appreciation of  _ her.  _

Perhaps it was better to allow the feeling to creep away on its own? Did it grow stronger because she battled it? Anne mused on this when she finished the Mozart, coming to herself at the appreciation of the others, and Captain Harville’s saying loudly to his wife, “I daresay nothing Beethoven wrote could top  _ that _ , Mrs. Harville. Beethoven’s first compositions sound entirely like Mozart.”

“I shan’t even dignify that with a response,” Captain Wentworth said to Anne, arranging her music for her. “The music will speak for itself, won’t it Miss Elliot?” 

That he should choose to speak her, as Captain Harville chose to speak to his wife, persuaded Anne that should she succumb to wishful thinking  _ now _ , it might be taken by the others as a continuation of the joke. She smiled at Captain Wentworth, a shade more shyly than she would have in the past. “I should hope so.”

Anne began the Beethoven with more assurance than she had the Mozart. Sinking into the fantasy that Captain Wentworth still loved her made it easier to play. To have him by her now was not torment but a pleasure. She knew by the way he shifted in his seat, the slight creak of the piano stool, when he turned from her to the music; she needed only to move her chin to have him turn the page. How wonderful it was, to have someone who understood her, and even anticipated what she needed. Even the second movement of the sonata, overlaid as it was with a thousand memories, the weight of sentiment like that of sediment, making it feel as likely to crumble as the shale in the cliffs of Lyme, did not feel dangerous. 

When she had finished, Captain Wentworth said, as the others clapped and Captain Harville made his case for Mozart, “You play the sonata even better now than when last I heard it.”

“That must have been eight years ago,” said Anne, suddenly self-conscious once again.

“I believe so,” said Captain Wentworth, a little self-conscious himself. “But those memories— I suppose you look back on them in pain only, but I still recall some of those days with pleasure.” 

Anne looked up at him, unable to hide her surprise. She suddenly recalled that if there was a rockslide, it would reveal all that Anne wished most to conceal. She was glad when the others came up to her, and Captain Harville pulled Captain Wentworth to argue over Beethoven and Mozart. Anne found the sheet music for some dances and offered to play, her panic forcing her to admit, “I have so missed playing; it would give me great pleasure to remain where I am.” 

The rest of the evening became devoted to teaching the Harville children how to dance. Captain Benwick read, and when Anne and the Harvilles returned home Captain Wentworth followed them into the hall saying, “Just a moment, Miss Elliot.” 

“How can I help you, Captain?”

“I have a present for you,” he said, withdrawing a handkerchief-wrapped bundle from the pocket of his overcoat, which was hanging in the hall. “I know I have been the reason you have not been curio-hunting. I am afraid the times I ventured down to the cliffs on my own, I could not unearth your sea monster, but with the help of Miss Anning— and particularly her dog— I did find this.”

Anne took the bundle and untied it, revealing a snake stone she had not seen before. It had been cut in half, and polished to an almost pearl-like sheen.

“That is a very fine snake stone,” observed Mrs. Harville. “I like the ones that are split open more, I think.”

“I do as well,” said Anne. This was an evening of wonders indeed. “It is so pretty.”

“It happens sometimes, according to Miss Anning,” said Captain Wentworth. “The inner chambers become mineralized. When she polished it, I immediately thought you might like it. Do you?”

“I do, very much.” Anne looked up at him, too overwhelmed by her feelings to be able to make sense of them. “Thank you, I— I… thank you.” 

Anne spent a restless night, staring at the snake stone on the table beside her bed. What… did this mean? Captain Wentworth was being so kind, so attentive to her. He had alluded to their past, saying he recalled it, or some part of it, with pleasure. How was this possible?

Was she deluding herself? 

Anne turned restlessly, putting the back of her hand to her forehead. 

It seemed of all things impossible that he should love her still. 

But, asked the shameful, selfish part of her, was it entirely out of the question? He had loved her once before. He could love her again.

Anne could not crush this hope immediately. Even contemplating dismissing the idea brought tears to her eyes. She fell easily into the fantasy, gathering to her heart all the little proofs that evening had supplied. His previous behavior to her had shown her that he still cared about her. At Uppercross, he had not forgiven her, but proved that he could not see her suffering without wishing to relieve it. And having relieved it— perhaps he had then realized how very little power she had, how dependent she was on the goodwill of others to get through life. Did he understand now, why she had chosen as she did? Why she had decided to break with him rather than become a burden on him?

And knowing this… could it have softened his heart towards her, allowing her to enter it once more?

Anne was still dazzled by this fantasy the next day. She did not pay attention to a word Captain Benwick read the next morning, and was startled when Mrs. Harville said to her, “I wonder, Miss Elliot, if I could steal you upstairs for a moment? My sister sent me some muslin from Paris, and said I must make a dress for myself with it, but I always have trouble measuring myself… and I know I am not the same size I was the last time I measured myself. That was before I had little Beatrice.”

Louisa seemed absorbed in Captain Benwick’s reading, and Sarah the nursery-maid contentedly knitting away beside her, so Anne said, “I would be glad to help.”

Once they had finished with the measuring tape, Mrs. Harville cleared her throat uncomfortably.

“Yes?”

“Miss Elliot— I hope you will not take it amiss, but I wanted to… that is, you have become a very dear friend to me, and Captain Wentworth has been very good to our family in very trying times, and is a very good man. But he is… that is, Captain Harville told me he believed that Captain Wentworth and Miss Musgrove were engaged.”

Unguarded and distracted as she was, this hit her like a blow from a closed fist. Anne had to sit down from actual weakness. She looked at the ground and managed to get out a quiet, “Yes, I— that is, I do not think they are engaged, but they are likely to become so.” 

“And I am sure you have told yourself this ten times since last night,” Mrs. Harville said sympathetically, putting an arm around Anne. “Captain Wentworth really has no right to be as charming as he is.”

Humiliatingly, Anne’s eyes filled with tears. “Please, do not—”

“I would not speak of this to anyone else for all the world!” cried Mrs. Harville. “I only meant to put you on your guard, after seeing how his getting you that snake stone affected you. I see I did not need to. Oh I am sorry.”

Anne could not stop her tears, though she tried. Mrs. Harville put her other arm about Anne, and Anne buried her face against Mrs. Harville’s shoulder. She had gone so long, bearing this alone, suffering from its weight. “It is my own fault,” said Anne. “He did nothing.”

“It is no one’s fault,” said Mrs. Harville. “That is just the way it is, at times. But I am here for you, Anne— if I may call you Anne?”

No one called her Anne affectionately, except for Lady Russell. “Please do,” Anne choked out.

Mrs. Harville stroked her hair, “Then you must call me Phoebe. I think highly of Captain Wentworth, he is a good man, but over gallant to the ladies at times. It surprised me when Harville told me Captain Wentworth was engaged to Miss Musgrove. It must be an adjustment to him as well. And if it is merely that old habits do not go easily to their graves… let me tell you, Anne, you are better off without an inconstant man. One foot on sea and one on shore, as Captain Benwick was reading to us last night. No stability. A woman cannot build a life on that.”

“I do not think he was being inconstant to Miss Musgrove,” said Anne. “I think he was being kind, because— because he felt guilty I had a cold. He was the same when I was first ill; he offered to bring sheet music back for me from Kellynch. Captain Wentworth could not have known what his kindness would mean to me, or how it would affect me.”

She banished forever the idea Captain Wentworth had been so because he loved her again. It was impossible to doubt Phoebe Harville’s words, impossible to doubt Captain Harville, who had known Captain Wentworth since they were both midshipmen. 

“That does seem more the man who went to tell Captain Benwick of Fanny's death, when my Harville was too lost in his own grief to go himself,” said Phoebe. “Cry on, my dear. I know myself that the harder you ignore a feeling, the more it makes itself known. Let us just sit together with it.” 

And so the layers of sentiment had slipped, thought Anne, still crying against Phoebe’s worn daygown. But at least when Phoebe had seen the undead monster of Anne’s unrequited love, Phoebe had met her with sympathy and with kindness. Anne told herself again, not to miss what she had out of longing for what she did not have. No friend had ever been sympathetic about Anne’s feelings for Captain Wentworth. And in the midst of this tempest there was that glimmer of daylight: now one was.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] And Now the Storm-Blast Came](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17673785) by [Sunfreckle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunfreckle/pseuds/Sunfreckle)




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